@dustsucker2099 || Journal Entry
Weristder
YKWBS.TXT
04 Apr 2024, 10:18 AM
(This is not a rant about this site in particular. This is a rant for just about every site that hosts user content.)
Does everybody live in the cloud nowadays? Nobody downloads anything to their hard drive for backup, collection, or whatever reason?
Like, wouldn't it be nice if there was a direct and upfront way to identify the title of the work, the username or account that uploaded it, prehaps even some code that leads back to the source of origin? Wouldn't it be useful for crediting and accessibility?
Maybe have all that in the file's metadata stored? Or better yet, how about putting it right in the filename in a neat format like %FILENAME_by_%USERNAME_%IDCODE ?
If there is one thing that DA does/did right, it's the filenames of the images and whatever else taken off the site. You can immediately know the key details, and It can even be searched back with the fav.me codes, directly to the page where it came from. You can get to the gallery of the uploader, or know if the upload was taken down, and not waste hours hunting for it, especially in the search engines that are deliberately designed to waste your time. This system was so functional and comfortable, that everything else is lame by comparison. Why are the filenames some jumbled mess (of file hashes or random sequences, I don't care). It also makes organization of the files easier, locally on your HD definitely, perhaps it can be a useful system for the server side aswell.
Unfortunaltely, the decay of DA started to seep into the naming system aswell. Even if just sporadically, as some file names become a jumbled sequence, others are right - no matter of the freshness of the upload date. Luckily the direct fav.me codes are still present. I don't care about DA anymore, just for note I mention it.
YT functions kinda okay in this regard, at least there are tidy identifier codes that can lead back to the exact page, and JDownloader can embed the details and link into the metadata of video file.
Sure you can rename the files yourself to a rational system, but it gets a hassle if there is a bunch. Plus there is also the possibility of typos. There were multiple occasions where a stupid typo sent me on a loop, or even prevented me to find the origin. Blast it!
Most Websites don't care, some even deliberatly sabotage the filenames/downloads. And that's BS.
As someone who's invested an irrational amount of time trying to track down the original source of memes, I feel this so hard. There is authorship metadata in things like PDFs and Exif, but as far as I know it's not something that's easily crosslinked or externally referenced. You'd think Internet communications protocols would make tracebacks easier, but unless you're essentially embedding phantom trackers into your files*, half of it's a guessing game and the other half's dumb luck as to whether the original even still exists. I'm not a software engineer, but it's the sort of thing I imagine wouldn't be that hard to implement if a universal parser could be agreed upon.
Blockchains would almost work for such a catalogue, but of course blockchains are literally destroying the planet. :/
* There was a Furry Drama scandal some years ago concerning a cartoonist that took a witch-hunt on reposts to some legally dubious extremes.