RD: Listen, when the ephemeralist manifesto is published, this is going to be where they point and say, “Here's where it all started.”

PF: No one is ever going to be able to find it.

RD: Well, are they going to deep-link to Archive.org, or is it going to be perma-linked to wagsrevue.com? We’ll see. I have to say, when I didn’t know the answer to, “Why is ‘Wag’s Revue’ ending?” I was surprised and delighted that you answered it for me, when you answered the question of why you would put FTrain in archive mode. Which is, it’s done. It's over.

PF: It’s done, right? And it’s great, but the way that the Web is structured, people would prefer them not to be over, in the same way that they don’t like TV shows to end.

It’s more convenient if things go on for a long time, so for FTrain, the solution for me, even though it had some very passionate fans, was just to let it drift. And now I think if I put it in archive mode and I say, “Here’s what I’m doing now,” people are going to be supportive.

You know, the other option you have here would be to check everything into a Git repository, and then you put it on GitHub – put it straight into the commons, all the source code, everything, and then you’ve created a genuine representation of it as a digital entity.

RD: It’s funny, because you were surprised when I said it was rigged up with Drupal. So much of what we see on the Internet is a series of abstractions layered on top of each other, designed to hide the ugly truth from people who are reading it.

PF: So why not preserve that?

RD: This is the thing. There’s a difference between saying, Wag’s Revue existed; what did it say? And saying, Wag’s Revue existed; how did they say it?