[WikiEN-l] Ephemeral nature of web pages - a silly idea?

[Jake Waskett]

A splendid idea for Internet-based research in general, and it's
surprising how few people do this (myself included, I admit).

In terms of Wikipedia sourcing, however, it may create (or overlook) a
problem: verifiability. What is the purpose, for Wikipedia, of doing so?

Is the purpose to be able to say, at some later date, "oh, that page
must've been deleted. Want me to email you a copy of the original?" If
so, is that verifiable? I don't think so - it may be impossible to
contact you, for example. So how do Wikipedia readers benefit?

On the other hand, if the page concerned contained quotations or cited
other sources that may help in locating a *different* source, then it is
certainly helpful, albeit indirectly.

My concern is that encouraging saving of pages - however unofficially -
may be seen to imply the former, perhaps undermining vital policies. But
this may be avoidable.

Jake

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 16:09 -0500, James Hare wrote:
> I have an idea.
> 
> How about, from now on, every time any of us uses a web source, we save the
> page so that it'll be around in the future? Not necessarily making this a
> policy, or a guideline, but a Really Good Idea.
> 
> Once it goes off the Internet, we will still have it for at least our own
> use.
> 
> Or how about a Library of Congress-esque things for websites, where
> identified websites are selectively archived so they can exist for eternity
> (as opposed to Wayback Machine which seems to work as randomly picking
> pages).
> 
> On 1/2/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Problem is their lag time. It takes over 6 months for stuff to appear
> > there
> > by which time you are in deep trouble if it wasn't stored to begin with.
> > It
> > would be nice if every site that's referenced in Wikipedia is spidered
> > automatically just like every site that's visited by a surfer with an
> > Alexa
> > toolbar.
> >
> > Mgm
> >
> >
> > On 1/2/07, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > There might be some copyright problems involved with that proposal.
> > >
> > > There is a partial solution, however. The Wayback Machine
> > > [http://www.archive.org/index.php] archives many web pages and their
> > > revisions. They have negotiates an exemption to the DMCA
> > > [http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=82097], and so will
> > > probably be around for some time to come.
> > >
> > > Jake
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 05:33 -0800, zero 0000 wrote:
> > > > We allow web pages as sources under some reliability
> > > > criteria, even though the web page might change or go
> > > > away.  We choose to live with this problem as a lesser
> > > > evil than banning web sources altogether.  But, I was
> > > > wondering: could Wikipedia not keep its own archive of
> > > > web pages used as sources?  Or some such web pages?
> > > > This is a minimally thought out proposal as you can tell!
> > > >
> > > > Zero.
> > >
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