[WikiEN-l] Interesting debate over reliable sources

[Andrew Gray]

[Apologies for the last, quotes-only, email - hit the wrong button]

On 10/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> I agree that this would be useful, to the extent it's possible ("there
> is a 6-12 month lag between the date a site is crawled and the date it
> appears in the Wayback Machine").  Also, since IA can and will remove
> pages from the archive under certain circumstances (one of which is
> when a robots.txt file appears later), you still have to worry about
> an archive disappearing later.

Mmm. IA have made it reasonably clear that they're not there to
compete with paid-for "real archives", if that makes sense - they're
not going to be competing with the NYT for access to NYT backstories,
which are our major need for links to transient pages. It *is* better
than nothing - especially if we extend it to the national
legal-deposit archives that will be slowly appearing - but I'm not
sure if it'd be enough benefit to be worth the work.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk