Sidetracked

The Library of Alexandria has one key-holder (and they’re having a bad day)

Well. I can't access The Cutting Room Floor anymore. Whenever I try, I get a 403 Forbidden status code.

According to Xkeeper, running TCRF is a one-person operation.

If you've been living under a rock, TCRF is THE resource for cut content in video games. And I do mean THE resource, it's pretty much the only one. TCRF is essentially the Library of Alexandria for video game archaeology.

If said one person decides that your IP range, region, or vibe is unwelcome, that history effectively ceases to exist for you. It's the Library of Alexandria, and one person holds a box of matches.

In the web's infancy, information was pretty scattered. Now there is The Resource™. If that one person running The Resource™ has a bad day or a personal grievance, well, they can tell you to go pound sand and there will be exactly nothing you can do about it.

FOSS and Wikis are built on the dream of decentralization, yet they almost always coalesce around a single gatekeeper.

DeaDBeef, node-ipc, the literal Linux kernel, Python (pre-2018), Wikipedia (when it first started out), Wikidata, curl, SQLite, all these are examples of this exact thing happening.

On the surface, it seems open, but for all of them, there was ONE person — dictator, rather — who could do anything they wanted.

How dangerous is it that our collective knowledge of "what was left behind" in games relies on the server configurations of a single individual?

If they get hit by a bus or just get bored, does that data vanish? Most of TCRF is not archived elsewhere!

The early web was chaotic and decentralized (well, even that's debatable with the whole thing of buying a domain and potentially just having it taken away, but that's a whole other problem), it was scattered and there was no Library of Alexandria to burn, at least not like TCRF.

Nowadays, that has largely been traded for the convenience of a single wiki. If Xkeeper decides to go home and take his ball with them, the history of 1,000+ games becomes a 404.

Wikis like TCRF give off the impression of a public utility or a digital commons. Users, like me, contribute free labour under the assumption it's building something for everybody. But TCRF is an example of the truth, it's being a guest in someone else's house, and at any time they can kick you out and never let you back in.

It's donating your labour to a private server that can be gated at any moment.

Most people visiting TCRF are trying to study history. And one server config has decided a certain few don't exist. It's the gatekeeper saying "I don't care if you're a scholar, you look like a bot to my Nginx config!"

When you contribute to a wiki, you're not just writing history. You're increasing the value and gravity of that domain. By making TCRF one of the only meaningful resources, contributors inadvertently help build the walls that can later be used to lock them out.

In the physical world, if a library bans you, there is usually a human process, a conversation, a reason, a way to appeal. In the digital world — and TCRF (Xkeeper openly admits to blocking entire IP ranges, and in a rather enthusiastic manner) — your existence is reduced to an IP range.

If your ISP happens to share a range with a botnet or a country the admin dislikes, you are collateral damage in a silent war you didn't know was happening. History shouldn't be gated by a .conf file.

Users till the land (write articles, upload assets) for free, but they don't own the soil. The admin owns the domain, the database, and the hosting.

In the physical world, if a landlord kicks you off the land, the land still exists. In the digital world, if the admin bans your IP or nukes the DB, the "land" effectively vanishes for you. You’ve worked to build a wall that is now being used to keep you out.

An admin doesn't have to look you in the eye to ban you; they just have to add a CIDR block to a blacklist. It turns history into a privilege granted by your ISP's geographical location rather than a right of human curiosity.

We congregate around one "Authority" (TCRF, Wikipedia, Arch Wiki) because it’s efficient. But efficiency is the enemy of resilience.

The "older" internet contained a thousand libraries. If one burned, you went to the next. The "modern" internet is one massive library with a single entrance, and the guard at the door is tired, cranky, and overwhelmed by botnets.

Why do we contribute to these things? We think we are preserving history. If you want to write about a Majora's Mask beta leak, you write about it on TCRF. Why? Because that's where people will see it, and it will be useful.

When a single person runs a massive repository, they aren't just the librarian; they are the sole key-holder. If Xkeeper disappears, the domain registration eventually expires. Once the domain expires, the "Library" doesn't just close; it gets bulldozed and replaced with one weird trick insurance companies don't want you to know!

If TCRF blocks a certain country’s IP range to stop a DDoS, they have effectively declared that an entire nation’s scholars are collateral damage for the sake of one person’s server uptime. I bet TCRF's owner is really good at playing Monopoly.

Xkeeper seems to have a sense of pride in being a one-man show. This is often framed as "heroic" in tech circles, but I see it as systemic negligence.

If a physical museum with world-class artifacts had only one employee who also owned the building and the locks, we wouldn't call it a "dedicated project", we’d call it a hoarding situation.

It's incredibly lazy to use block an CIDR block in a situation like this, too. It's the nuclear option of sysadmin. It invites situations where people receive punishment for the heinous crime of sharing a CIDR block with a script kiddie.

The barrier to entry isn't just the code; it's the gravity. TCRF has decades of backlinks. If I start "The Better Cutting Room Floor" today, it will be buried on page 10 of Google results. We are trapped in a monopoly not of quality, but of momentum.

We are essentially donating our intellectual labor to a private asset. When you write a TCRF article, you aren't just contributing to "knowledge"; you are increasing the SEO value and Adsense potential (or just the personal prestige) of one person's domain. You are building a castle you aren't allowed to live in.

Because of TCRF's high domain authority, other sites or blogs covering the same content are buried. By being one of the only meaningful resources, TCRF hasn't just gathered information, it has displaced it. It has created a vacuum where no other library can grow, making its own potential failure a total extinction event for the data.

In engineering, a SPOF (Single Point Of Faliure) is a bug. In culture, we call it "dedication." I'd argue that if Xkeeper truly cared about the preservation of history over the control of it, they would have a succession plan or a decentralized mirror system. The fact that it remains a "one-person operation" is a choice to prioritize ego/control over the safety of the data. And we, for some reason, allow, and accept that.

It’s not just that the server might die, it’s that the intent of the owner is a single point of failure. If their "vibe" changes, the history changes.

If you want the prestige of being the Library of Alexandria, you lose the right to treat it like your personal Minecraft server.

I tried literally every server on Proton VPN, and as an extra middle finger from Xkeeper, all of them also returned 403 Forbidden.

But anyway, I still can't access TCRF, so pardon me while I burst into flames.

January 14, 2026 update:

Well, I'm tired of not being able to access TCRF. Time to contact a staff member!

"We'll need to know your IP address. You can use any of countless online services for this (just google "what is my IP"). Send your IP address to a staff member in DMs. My DMs are open for this, but you can pick any staff member you prefer." So, I get punished for being an introvert?

Anyway, our "lovely" converation went like this: Me: "Hello, I’m currently receiving a 403 Forbidden error when trying to access TCRF. This error is consistent across browsers and pages.

To my knowledge, I have no badly behaving extensions (as I only use Ublock Origin), and I do not use VPNs nor proxies.

I was directed here to provide my IP for unblocking. It is as follows: 196.39.70.254

Thank you for your time and patience on this matter. Good day."

Them: "...that IP computes to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension_Data that's a cloud computing provider, so there's a VPN somewhere in there"

Me: "i feared this would happen. let me explain: i understand the confusion, but I can clarify: i am a residential Webafrica customer on a Fiber-to-the-Home line.

while the IP resolves to Dimension Data/NTT Group, that is because Webafrica acquired Mweb from Dimension Data and continues to utilize NTT’s infrastructure for its national backbone and IP transit. in the South African market, Dimension Data/NTT acts as the primary wholesaler for many consumer ISPs.

IP address blocks are registered with regional registries and often list the original or upstream AS/organization, not the retail ISP.

if you check the PTR records for this IP, the hostname is 96-39-70-254.ftth.web.africa. the .ftth.web.africa suffix confirms this is a consumer fiber line (Fiber-to-the-Home) provided by Webafrica, not a cloud instance or a VPN exit node.

also, Webafrica acquired Mweb from Dimension Data/NTT, a Tier 1 IP provider, but it is now a distinct retail ISP serving consumers in South Africa.

im happy to provide any more info you need"

Them: "alright, I'm gonna trust you, I'll forward the IP and check back as soon as I know more"

I can't lie, I expected basic research before making claims that I'm a data center. Yeah, I'm getting rather tilted by this.

YOURE SUPPOSED TO BE THE KNOWLEDGEABLE ONE HERE. It's backwards that I have to correct them,

Their first felt weirdly snarky, like they caught me red handed or something. Like I was trying to pull a fast one. You didn't catch anything.

Oh my, thank you so much for doing me the grand favor of researching before you make claims. And the 3 ellipses really adds to the snarkiness. Oh my, you caught me, I'm running a data center and I want to scrape TCRF on exactly one IP.

The admin has seen a name they associate with "Cloud/VPN" and has immediately moved to the "I've caught you" phase of the conversation. They are using a surface-level lookup to dismiss my reality.

In the South African ISP market, WebAfrica (my ISP) relies heavily on the infrastructure of NTT/Dimension Data. When an admin sees "Dimension Data," they think AWS or DigitalOcean, but in South Africa, that is simply the backbone of consumer Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH).

Because I live in a region where the ISP infrastructure is consolidated under a name that looks like a cloud provider to a Western admin, I am being treated as a security threat. It’s a form of digital redlining. The "Library of Alexandria" is closed to me because my country's internet architecture doesn't fit the admin's narrow definition of what a "real person" looks like.

The sheer arrogance of "I'm gonna trust you" is breathtaking. It frames their own lack of technical due diligence as an act of personal charity toward me.

To a Western admin, "Dimension Data = Enterprise/Cloud." They didn't bother to check the PTR record or the FTTH suffix because they already had a "hit." It’s a confirmation bias that turns into digital discrimination.

The interaction had that distinct flavor of "guilty until proven innocent," where the burden of proof falls entirely on me, the person trying to access publicly contributed knowledge, to demonstrate I'm not a threat.

The three ellipses before accusing you of using a VPN is doing a lot of work there. It's the textual equivalent of a raised eyebrow, implying I'm being deceptive. When I'm the one who voluntarily provided my IP and explained my situation transparently.

And then: "I'm gonna trust you" as if they're doing you a favor by... checking whether your technically detailed explanation is accurate? That's not trust, that's just doing the absolute minimum due diligence before blocking someone.

I'm also just so pissed at the fact that they treated me like an idiot.

"this IP computes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension_Data" What does that even mean? Did you use a reverse DNS lookup? Did you find the ASN and use that? Did you even do anything at all?

In networking, things don't "compute" to an organization; they resolve (via DNS) or they are allocated (via ARIN/AFRINIC).

By ignoring the PTR record and just looking at the ASN, the admin chose the bluntest, laziest tool available and then used it to "well, actually" me.

It is a special kind of hell to have to explain the basic mechanics of DNS and ISP transit to the person who has the power to silence you. We are living in an era where the people running the 'Libraries' have forgotten how the plumbing works, yet they still feel entitled to judge who deserves a drink.

So, let's recap:

  1. I provide my IP address
  2. They do a surface-level WHOIS lookup
  3. They see "Dimension Data" and jump to conclusions
  4. They accuse me of using a VPN
  5. I have to write a technical explainer about South African ISP infrastructure
  6. They graciously "trust" me
  7. Then I got unblocked

So anyway, now I wanted to read the TCRF page on the SpongeBob movie game, so I opened all the pages in new tabs as I always do, but now I'm paranoid that I'll look like a bot. Thanks TCRF.

And I know what you're thinking, "well you can't expect a western admin to know the inner workings of South African telecom"

Then why do they pretend like they do?