My (uneducated!) guess would be that AO3 might not just store literally everything on one huge server and call it a day, but also have some sort of backup server in case shit hits the fan. I fail to picture a site this size being completely unprepared and entirely reliant on one piece of hardware.
Or are you referring to different archives merged into AO3 in general? It's about archives which have ceased to exist or are on the brink of doing so, for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, money for big servers. Sure, if AO3 goes down for a bit, everything is unaccessible during maintenance time, but the imported works are ultimately still existent.
This being said, it's never a bad thing to have some backup for your own works in case of emergency (I know for a fact that I did in the past and still do), but that's within your own responsibility as an author.
This, however, brings me to another concern I forgot to ask about (so, thanks for that! :) ) after the site went down due to the maximum capacity of bookmarks reached: As the exponential growth of AO3's userbase and subsequent increase in works and bookmarks starting earlier this decade was fairly unexpected prior to that, is it also possible to reach a certain cap of works and their constituent chapters that can be expected to be reached within the upcoming years, be it a natural file storage maximum, or simply a cap in the work/chapter IDs that can be assigned (as was the case with the bookmarks) - and is there a plan for that point, e.g. expanding server capacities?
You're right, it probably does have backups! I'm speaking from a historical/anthropological perspective, on the idea that keeping all the eggs in one basket may prove to be catastrophic to the amount of data stored here. Having backups is of course each author's personal responsibility, but there's a fair amount of works here (especially after the Star Trek site was merged a few months ago) that no longer have living authors to keep physical copies. If within the next 100 years we see a physical server failure or spike in reactionary censorship like we saw in the 60s and early 2000s, we stand to lose a ton of history all at once.
On the other hand though, nothing lasts forever `\o/` :P
Ah, we're getting into history? Count me in! :D Now, it ultimately comes down to my theory on the reciprocal relationship between data amounts and data saving security.
We (as in, humanity as a whole) once started off with inscriptions and stone tablets back in the day. They were a safer method to keep information in terms of resilience towards physical perils from outside such as fire and water than anything that followed, so some managed to last for several millennia; the down side being the limited space they offered, as well as the tremendous effort of creating and editing its content. At some point, paper came by, offering a lot more space than stone tablets, getting the text onto it was a lot easier, even more so after block printing became a thing; yet, paper can easily be destroyed by fire, water, or other natural influences. In the more modern age, we got computers, and with them, a consistent rise in data capacity, with additional devices consuming less and less physical space while offering more and more digital one; however, your device needs electricity, and even with it, it won't last more than a couple of decades at best. And finally, the internet came around, being able to save all knowledge of humanity and give us easy access to it; yet, even if your portable device won't be broken or run out of energy anytime soon, all it takes is being disconnected from wi-fi in order to lose access to it.
And this theory only refers to the organic change in technology and doesn't even include the everlasting danger of times shifting towards a more rigid and oppressive approach to arts that may reduce the availability of historical documents deliberately, something all human societies are naturally prone to and show some historical record of, even if we only take the past one or two centuries into account.
Nothing lasts forever, indeed ... so, maybe, let's have fun with it while it lasts? ;) (And perhaps make backups and download as many of our favorite fics as we can. It's not much, but it's honest work!)
A hard drive with the favorites is a great idea! I guess there's no point in being worried about losing all of this in the next few centuries. So long as there's people being born, there will be stories being written!
I have a 15-year-old haunted external hard drive (with a plug type that might be globally unique by now) in my east facing window sill, is that a good start as well? ;)
Butting into this very interesting conversation, I just want to add that there are fans who download, format and print out their favorite fics, to keep in whatever form they choose - some old fics were preserved because people kept them in plastic sheets inside folders especially dedicated to that; nowadays there are also fans who are into bookbinding so they turn their favorite fics into books for personal use or as a gift to the author. I'm also thinking about all the notebooks filled with fic that people who prefer writing by hand must keep in their houses, personal belongings, etc.
It's true that a lot of fic would/will be lost to time this way though. I wish preservation was more of a concern at the forefront of readers's minds, but it also took several mass deletions of online content that I used to enjoy for digital media preservation to become an important issue to me. I think most people aren't really aware how ephemeral most digital content really is.
I think it's just easy to forget that internet media IS physical media because the physical part is hidden in funny boxes in funny server rooms. I have a firm belief that everything echoes, so none of this is ever actually gone, but a common goal of media preservation is a healthy one to have
Comment on Forging Ghost is Moving to the AO3!
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