We need a trusted and reliable archiving project (and perhaps mirrors). Webcite or Wikiwix can be great projects, but, how long will they be in the web? Until 2012? 2015? 2020?
The average life of a website is 77 days[1], and we see dead links everywhere in Wikipedia articles. This is a big problem, and not only for Wikipedia, Internet builds and destroyes information too fast.
Internet Archive is a nonprofit foundation, and it is running since 1996, so I think that it is a stable project and they are going to create mirrors in more countries (now there is a mirror in Alexandria). But, of course, Webcite or Wikiwix can help storing web copies (3 different archiving projects are better than only 1).
Regards, emijrp
[1] http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php
2010/8/24 Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com
Hi,
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 4:47 PM, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
I took a look at the example in the french wiki, and didnt spot a date in the archive reference. If the source changes its content, this may pose a problem.
If you click on an archive link the top frame will display the exact date
of the archiving - I think the reason it is not displayed by default on the French Wikipedia is because the archive links are generated by JavaScript on the fly. (At least that was the case the last time I looked at the French Wikipedia.)
Having the ability to store multiple copies of the same webpage (for different dates) was one of the first feature requests we had at the Hungarian Wikipedia and it seems they are working on it. Still, Wikiwix's service is very convenient and hassle free for all the static websites or references.
Webcitation.org also has a service for on-demand archiving and they do store multiple versions of the same page. Unfortunately their service is often intermittent and their website tends to go dark, but otherwise it is a convenient service for manual archiving. (I had a bot once that sent each link through its service on the Hungarian Wikipedia, and for a time the English Wikipedia had a similar bot.
Best regards, Bence _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l