Ways Non-Developers Help With Digital Preservation of Code

I came across an article about code being a liability and it made me think about digital preservation of code. I regularly lead data migrations in the cultural heritage space and often see the database/system degrade as we prepare to export.

Non-developers see the code of their systems degrade in real time when they express frustrations over search terms not pulling in items they know exist or the system crashing when they try clicking on a specific digital collection. Labor like taxonomy maintenance, updating metadata schemas, and reviewing/quality checking assets and their records are just some ways that non-developers help with digital preservation of code.

What can we do for a system infrastructure to help maintain it? How much do you think about your data work being digital preservation? In what ways do you see code as a liability?

Read the article: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes