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Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

hawaiigentech.com

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Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#101

Post by privong »

NateEag wrote: post #97
bartread wrote: post #21

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this because it just turns WayBackMachine into another content silo. It's called the world wide web for a reason, and this isn't helping. I can see it for corporate sites where they change content, remove pages, and break links without a moment's consideration. But for my personal site, for example, I'd much rather you link to me directly rather than content in WayBackMachine. Apart from any…

I use linkchecker for this on my personal sites: https://linkchecker.github.io/linkchecker/ There's a similar NodeJS program called blcl (broken-link-checker-local) which has the handy attribute that it works on local directories, making it particularly easy to use with static websites before deploying them. https://www.npmjs.com/package/broken-link-checker-local

> There's a similar NodeJS program called blcl (broken-link-checker-local) which has the handy attribute that it works on local directories

linkchecker can do this as well, if you provide it a directory path instead of a url.

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#102

Post by shortformblog »

This man’s entire argument is completely terrible for two reasons:

1) The example he uses is The Epoch Times, a questionable source even on the best of days.

2) What he refers to as “spam” is a paywall. He is literally taking away from business opportunities for this outlet that produced a piece of content he wants to draw attention to, but he does not want to otherwise support.

He’s a taker. And while the Wayback Machine is very useful for sharing archived information, that’s not what this guy is doing. He’s trying to undermine the business model of the outlets he’s reading.

The Epoch Times is one thing—it’s an outlet that is essentially propaganda—but when he does this to a local newspaper or an actual independent media outlet, what happens?

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#104

Post by scruffyherder »

bartread wrote: post #21

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this because it just turns WayBackMachine into another content silo. It's called the world wide web for a reason, and this isn't helping. I can see it for corporate sites where they change content, remove pages, and break links without a moment's consideration. But for my personal site, for example, I'd much rather you link to me directly rather than content in WayBackMachine. Apart from any…

I spent hours getting all the stupid redirects working from different hosts, domains and platforms.

People still use rss to either steal my stuff, or discuss it off site (as if commenting to the author is so scary!) or in a way to make me totally unaware of it happening as so many times people either ask questions of the author on a site like this, or even bring up good points or something to go further on that I would miss otherwise.

It’s a shame ping backs were hijacked but the siloing sucks too.

Sometimes I forget for months at a time to check other sites, not every post generates 5000+ hits in an hour.

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#105

Post by scruffyherder »

deepstack wrote: post #70
bartread wrote: post #21

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this because it just turns WayBackMachine into another content silo. It's called the world wide web for a reason, and this isn't helping. I can see it for corporate sites where they change content, remove pages, and break links without a moment's consideration. But for my personal site, for example, I'd much rather you link to me directly rather than content in WayBackMachine. Apart from any…

yeah at some point, way back machine need to be on webttorrent, ipfs type of thing where it is immutable.

I was surprised when digital.com got purged

Then further dismayed that the utzoo Usenet archives were purged.

Archive sites are still subject to being censored and deleted.

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#107

Post by scruffyherder »

outsomnia wrote: post #16

This is a bad idea... In the worst case one might write a cool article and get two hits, one noticing it exists, and the other from the archive service. After that it might go viral, but the author may have given up by then. The author is losing out on inbound links so google thinks their site is irrelevant and gives it a bad pagerank. All you need to do is get archive.org to take a copy at the time, you can always a…

Even worse, when you have people using rss to wholesale copy your site and it’s updates and again that traffic and more importantly the engagement disappear.

It’s very demotivating

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#108

Post by scruffyherder »

mountainb wrote: post #92

Link rot has convinced me that the web is not good for its ostensible purpose. I used to roll my eyes reading how academic researchers and librarians would discourage using webpages as resources. Many years later, it's obvious that the web is pretty bad for anything that isn't ephemeral.

After someone published an authoritative ftp listening, so many people panicked as their were out of date and insecure versions so rather than patch they all went dark.

Anyone doing research just got screwed.

So many papers have code listed to places that don’t exist anymore.

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#109

Post by techphys_91 »

ImaCake wrote: post #96
mountainb wrote: post #92

Link rot has convinced me that the web is not good for its ostensible purpose. I used to roll my eyes reading how academic researchers and librarians would discourage using webpages as resources. Many years later, it's obvious that the web is pretty bad for anything that isn't ephemeral.

>I used to roll my eyes reading how academic researchers and librarians would discourage using webpages as resources. While this is true in general, I am amused that this is not true for citing wikipedia. Wikipedia can be trusted to remain online for many more years to come. And it has a built-in wayback machine in the form of Revision History.

Usually a reference indicates that an author believes something to be true, but won't explicitly state their reasons. It isn't just a statement of where information comes from, but a justification for trusting that information. If the reference is from a reputable source, then it indicates that this belief is justified. If an author believes something to be true because they read it on wikipedia, then that belief probably isn't justified, because the reliability of wikipedia content is mixed.

Good quality information on wikipedia often refers back to published sources, and at the very least an author should check that source and refer to it, rather than wikipedia itself.

Re: Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

#110

Post by NateEag »

privong wrote: post #101
NateEag wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use linkchecker for this on my personal sites: https://linkchecker.github.io/linkchecker/ There's a similar NodeJS program called blcl (broken-link-checker-local) which has the handy attribute that it works on local directories, making it particularly easy to use with static websites before deploying them. https://www.npmjs.com/package/broken-link-checker-local

> There's a similar NodeJS program called blcl (broken-link-checker-local) which has the handy attribute that it works on local directories linkchecker can do this as well, if you provide it a directory path instead of a url.

Ah, thanks! I was not aware of that feature.
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