[WikiEN-l] Dealing with disappearing online sources

[Carl Beckhorn]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 01:29:32AM +0300, nsk wrote:
> A dead link is like a book which is out of print.  It is hard to find,
> but it was published someday, so it is appropriate to cite it as long as
> you include the access date (a short quotation would help too).

A book that is out of print but available in numerous libraries is 
treated differently, of course, than a book of which there are no 
remaining copies in existence. 

Web links should be treated the same.  Web content that has gone dead 
but has been archived elsewhere is not problematic.  Web content that 
has been lost to history is no longer valid as a reference on its own. 

 - Carl