Help the Internet Archive - their offices were destroyed in a fire

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/please-help-the-internet-archive-after-their-offices-were-destroyed-in-a-fire

by ajaymehta • 13 years ago

207 39 13 years ago

The title here is misleading. "Their offices" were not destroyed. The office involved was just a single office used for scanning content.

That being said. They are an amazing resource that I have used a few times to obtain copies of content that I had lost.

caboteria• 13 years ago

Why not cut out the middleman? https://archive.org/donate/

agwa• 13 years ago

The crowdfunding campaign will probably be more effective at raising money for this.

Fortunately, there is effectively no middleman here, according to the campaign's description:

* I've spoken with June from the IA, who will ensure that funds go directly to them.
* Crowdtilt has agreed to waive their card processing fee!

louprado• 13 years ago

Does crowdtilt only accept credit cards? Fortunately https://archive.org/donate/ accepts PayPal and other methods. Personally, I only impulse donate to small causes and having finding my CC is enough to make me "just do it later" (aka, forget to do it at all).

lectrick• 13 years ago

This is also how you can donate with Bitcoins. The crowdfunding site doesn't seem to allow that option.

givehimagun• 13 years ago

Naive question: what portion of this would be covered by insurance?

giarc2• 13 years ago

I think it is too early to start a campaign to raise funds. They first need to meet with their insurance provider to find out what is covered and what is not, then go to the public for funding. Unless they were grossly under insured and knew it, 1 day isn't enough time to determine what's covered.

Arelius• 13 years ago

Worst case, they get money that they didn't need for the repairs. And they put it to good use doing one of the many other things this super valuable (IMO) non-profit does.

They are after all a non-profit.

nathanb4• 13 years ago

I must be naive too, then, because this is what I thought at first. Anything that gets dollars into the hands of the archive.org folks is fine with me, but this is what insurance policies are for.

poopsintub• 13 years ago

Do they even own the place, it looks like it's probably rented. How much will it cost to replace a desk and a computer?

noselasd• 13 years ago

Insurance probably cover the material loss.

But often not the time to rebuild, reconfigure, re-layout, re-do, set-up, test every new item you get back. You might even have custom built, one-off pieces which will take even more effort to replace with whatever replacement gadget you get.

xvolter• 13 years ago

I was wondering this too. Won't they get back most of their loss from the insurance policy? Unless the fire was not covered due to a specific cause.

dnautics4• 13 years ago

There will almost certainly be costs not covered by insurance.

nathanb4• 13 years ago

Care to elaborate? Unless they are underinsured or did a poor job of estimating the value of their equipment, I don't understand why you are asserting that insurance wouldn't cover all losses. That's sort of what insurance is there for.

lambda• 13 years ago

I would guess a good portion of it, though not all, but that will probably take some time. As a non-profit that provides a widely used web service, they could probably always use more cash, so it's better to get donations now rather than waiting for their insurance to pay out. It's possible they were underinsured on some of this stuff; since they had a lot of custom hardware for scanning books, it may have been hard to price it accurately. It can also be a good fundraising call to arms; people who may have been on the fence or said "well, maybe I'll donate later" now have a reason to donate immediately.

Semaphor• 13 years ago

I used the fire as an excuse to finally set up a monthly donation for them. They deserve it.

cicloid• 13 years ago

I'm doing the same right now

HCIdivision17• 13 years ago

Thanks to the headline, I finally remembered to set that up, too. I suspect that if they need anymore money after insurance and such, the most effective time is to fund raise immediately. Hopefully it doesn't happen again, but maybe that's a silver lining!

andrewtbham2• 13 years ago

Did Tesla build their office?

andrewtbham2• 13 years ago

downvote away humorless nerds.

untog• 13 years ago

HN isn't really the place for punny jokes. Take them to Reddit.

AznHisoka• 13 years ago

Someone call a surgeon. Someone's ego was hurt.

corin_• 13 years ago

I'm not sure this is the site for you if you use "nerds" as an insult.

smoyer2• 13 years ago

What about us nerds who appreciate humor?

PhasmaFelis2• 13 years ago

Well, I wasn't gonna, but since you asked...

mrfixit• 13 years ago

Your reddit is leaking. Mop it up.

Procrastes• 13 years ago

donated.

Slightly off topic, but I really like Crowdtilt's payment dialog. That was easily the lowest friction payment box I've seen. I wonder who designed it? Looking at their terms, it looks like they're using Balanced Payments, was it an internal design or inspired by some Balance Payments widget?

jjb123• 13 years ago

Thanks :). We designed it in-house. One of the great benefits of balanced and stripe is complete customizability of not only the look and feel, but also of which fields to include/leave.

sp3322• 13 years ago

Another photo just posted on Tracey Jaquith's twitter @tracy_pooh https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BYfLJp2CEAAA7cU.jpg:large

sp3322• 13 years ago

Ah I fat-fingered that, for the record it's tracey_pooh with an 'e'.

smoyer2• 13 years ago

I'm using FireFox 25.0 and I got a notice about my browser not being new enough ... I never win!

Help the Internet Archive - their offices were destroyed in a fire

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