All,

Thanks to new architecture developments within the Memento Project, we are pleased to announce the availability of Version 1.0.0 of the Memento Headers time travel Extension for MediaWiki. The extension can be downloaded via [1]. Information on the extension is available at [2]. A demonstration wiki equipped with the extension is available at [3].

This extension only supplies the headers necessary to work with Memento clients [4], and does not provide all of the features of Memento for a MediaWiki installation. it relies upon an external TimeGate server, provided online by the Memento Project, to actually provide the datetime negotiation necessary for web time travel.

Memento clients allow one to select a past date and time to browse, and then browse the web as if it were that date and time. Installing the Memento Headers extension in a MediaWiki installation allows Memento clients to seamlessly transition from using web archives to wikis, allowing one to view past versions of web pages without interruption.

Earlier today, we announced the availability of version 2.1.0 of the full Memento extension. That extension provides additional functionality, such as ensuring that old revisions of images and templates match the revision of the page in which they are embedded. The Memento Headers extension does NOT provide such functionality. The Memento Headers extension only provides the headers necessary for Memento clients to find the oldid pages in MediaWiki installations that best match the datetime requested by the user.

As noted in the earlier announcement, the Memento protocol is currently used by major web archives [5] and supported by the International Internet Presevation Consortium [6]. Though we have the support of web archives, the Memento team also considers time travel in MediaWiki to be a major use of the protocol. Videos [7] and [8] show Memento at work in the web at large, the latter paying attention to navigation within Wikipedia. Video [9] shows Memento at work in the full Memento MediaWiki extension.

We really look forward to any feedback the Wikimedia community can provide on this new exciting (though limited) way to provide and experience Memento.

On behalf of the Memento Team,

Shawn M. Jones Graduate Research Assistant Department of Computer Science Old Dominion University

Email: sjone@cs.odu.edu Research group: http://ws-dl.blogspot.com Twitter: @shawnmjones

— [1] https://github.com/mementoweb/mediawiki-memento-headers/releases/tag/v1.0.0 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MementoHeaders [3] http://ws-dl-05.cs.odu.edu/demo-headers/index.php/Main_Page [4] http://bit.ly/memento-for-chrome [5] http://mementoweb.org/depot/ [6] http://netpreserve.org/ [7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_70lQPOOIg [8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtZHKeFwjzk [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciClYjTnscs