Imperfect

salvage digital flotsam

Inspired by Kami's digital hoarding.

Browser bookmarks have problems. Browsers can become overwhelmed if you keep too many bookmarks. Synchronization across different browsers, extensions, and tools can be difficult or impossible. Mechanisms you use one day could be abandoned, archived, or deleted the next day. When I used to keep them, I didn't actively go through most of them either.

That said, does worrying over such abundant data like bookmarks - particularly impulsive ones - lead to your best outcomes? If you're overwhelmed by abundance of possibility, another frame to look through could be, "What floats?" What captivates you best or most often? Chase that dragon instead of what doesn't pique your interest as much. Then, you can choose between finding the next best bookmarks to tackle.

If that doesn't work for you, maybe you can fold relevant bookmarks into other kinds of content. Outlines, mind maps, or even future blog posts can hold a surprising amount of bookmarks in relevant and refreshing ways.

If you want more ideas for solutions, ask a friend for help. If you find them unfit for the task, find another or resort to AI for as many solutions as you want. My reasoning is that shrinking bookmark hoards can have more than one correct solution. That becomes more true across people compared to just yourself.

Let's say you want to stop growing your hoard. Kevin's What is the least I can learn? preaches learning the tools you can accomplish your explicit goals with.

As for as keeping your hoard safe to whittle away at over time goes, that's where backups and testing their retrieval come in. While it may not matter for mildly interesting bookmarks, I'm sure there would be at least one you would miss if it were gone. Redundancy via backups is great, unless events render them inaccessible or destroyed with no other backups. You are best equipped to prevent yourself from having to say: "Now what?"

Speaking of permanence, what is the correct course of action regarding preservation? What should be done when or before people you like, know, or otherwise delete their output from your virtual grasp? Whose wishes are worth respecting most: theirs, yours, or anyone else's?

Playthings of Mad Gods' Avoiding Link Rot: Making My Old Posts Into PDF Compendiums requests people to archive their blogs and those that are no longer active. While that helps preserve then add to the knowledge graph that is life, is that the wish of those whose ideas are being archived? Then again, they were published in the first place.

Archiving your own work is much less ambiguous. All these virtual hotel chains you call home are impermanent rental units. Better preserve yourself and others while you can.

If you prefer going down with the ship instead, more power to you.

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