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The Internet Archive is absolutely essential to Wikipedia, whose articles are required to be verifiable to reliable sources. When pages go offline, the link rot

The Internet Archive is absolutely essential to Wikipedia, whose articles are required to be verifiable to reliable sources. When pages go offline, the link rot makes it harder for articles to be verified. However, if the Wayback Machine has an archived copy, that copy can then be cited as the source and made available to readers and editors. The Wayback Machine now automatically archives every new external link added to the English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot The Wikimedia Foundation's budget is about 10 times that of the Internet Archive. If you see the fundraising banner on Wikipedia and want to help out the site, but don't think the Wikimedia Foundation needs the donation, consider donating to the Internet Archive instead. https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate

Bartweiss 7y ago
This is a great point, thank you. It's been awesome to see archiving and Archive links become standard practice on Wikipedia. For a long time, links just rotted and were replaced. Then later, dead links would be switched to Archive content if it was available. But it's so much easier and more reliable to archive a page when it's referenced, and provide both links even while the page is still up. It's one thing to automate dead link detection, but archiving defends against a lot more. Universities seem to redo their sitemaps and redirect all their old links about once a year. And reference pages get edited, which goes unnoticed for a long time and then leads to frustrating [Not in citation given] tags. It's incredible what a boon the Internet Archive has been to wiki sourcing.
ignoramous 7y ago
> The Wayback Machine now automatically archives every new external link added to the English Wikipedia. Links submitted to Hacker News should be auto-archived, too: I often stumbled upon dead-links [0] which otherwise had generated insightful discussion on news.yc. Adding archive next to web would work nicely. [0] Launch HNs, in particular.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  It is possible to do that nowadays and that is one of the things I suggested implementing in tildes. https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/586 https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/586 I believe all link aggregators should do this, they're a great way of getting defacto quality/interesting content discovered by the archive.
  - dang 7y ago
    > A mechanism to save pages to the web archive has now been implemented. Just need to ping this URL: http://web.archive.org/save/<insert http://web.archive.org/save/<insert URL you want to save>. It's been on our list to do that for some time, but this should make it much easier. Thanks!
    - Sukotto 7y ago
      I hope you folks implement this, and also that YC sets a recurring donation to the archive. (Possibly tied to how many URLs you submit)
- class4behavior 7y ago
  Technically, a lot of content is cached/archived by online RSS services, like Inoreader or Newsblur, where users added full-text RSS feeds for HN.
- flashman 7y ago
  A third party could do this if they wished. Savepagenow is one of several wrappers that can save an arbitrary URL's contents to the Internet Archive: https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow Hook it up to RSS and away you go.
acqq 7y ago
> consider donating to the Internet Archive It is immensely important, especially as there is a strong trend to hide the content behind the paywalls and registration pages. Even if something is accessible today... And there are always forces who have an interest that some inconvenient data just disappear.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
Fantastic point. I personally would much rather support the Internet Archive than WF. Also, there is a 2:1 donor match thing happening now, making the value of each donation effectively triple. Moreover if your company matches 501(c) donations (mine does, at least up to something like $20k a year), you can have them match your donation too, effectively giving the archive a 4x your original donation.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Matching doesn't "effectively triple" the donation, because the matched part is someone else's donation. Deceptive tactics like this are toxic to charitable giving culture.
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    If the matching helps persuade people to donate, I'm all for it. The Internet Archive is a world wide treasure. Please donate! And it's really easy to set up an automatic monthly donation as I have done. One time donations are great. Ongoing income helps insure that this precious resource can continue to fulfill their mission.
    - Aeolun 7y ago
      I’m just happy they have a monthly option :) most services seem to only consider wanting to give once.
  - filmgirlcw 7y ago
    If the donation is contingent on someone else donating first, semantics aside, it’s the same thing. My employer wouldn’t donate to the Internet Archive in the amount that I gave unless I did first.
- zrm 7y ago
  > Moreover if your company matches 501(c) donations (mine does, at least up to something like $20k a year), you can have them match your donation too, effectively giving the archive a 4x your original donation. Wouldn't it be 6x, assuming your company could have their donation tripled as well?
slim 7y ago
Wikipedia should put a banner to raise funds for internet archive every year
kohtatsu 7y ago
Donation link (currently being matched 2:1) https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/
- tkgally 7y ago
  Earlier this year, I created a simple "Donate to the Internet Archive" logo for a website and e-book that I compiled from 19th- and early 20th-century books archived by IA. The logo links to the above IA donation page. Perhaps others would like to add the logo and link to their sites: http://gally.net/jatsi/ http://gally.net/jatsi/
lonelappde 7y ago
Wikipedia requires available sources, not reliable sources. Any published website is acceptable, regardless of fact check it standards.
- commoner 7y ago
  Wikipedia's standards have tightened over time. Its current requirements are much stricter than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
rbanffy 7y ago
> consider donating to the Internet Archive instead. If you happen to have power to do that at a large cloud provider, consider donating storage space and data movement services. Having a backup of the Internet Archive on cloud providers would offer an additional safeguard against data loss.

Bartweiss 7y ago

This is a great point, thank you. It's been awesome to see archiving and Archive links become standard practice on Wikipedia. For a long time, links just rotted and were replaced. Then later, dead links would be switched to Archive content if it was available. But it's so much easier and more reliable to archive a page when it's referenced, and provide both links even while the page is still up. It's one thing to automate dead link detection, but archiving defends against a lot more. Universities seem to redo their sitemaps and redirect all their old links about once a year. And reference pages get edited, which goes unnoticed for a long time and then leads to frustrating [Not in citation given] tags. It's incredible what a boon the Internet Archive has been to wiki sourcing.

ignoramous 7y ago

> The Wayback Machine now automatically archives every new external link added to the English Wikipedia. Links submitted to Hacker News should be auto-archived, too: I often stumbled upon dead-links [0] which otherwise had generated insightful discussion on news.yc. Adding archive next to web would work nicely. [0] Launch HNs, in particular.

scrollaway 7y ago
It is possible to do that nowadays and that is one of the things I suggested implementing in tildes. https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/586 https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/586 I believe all link aggregators should do this, they're a great way of getting defacto quality/interesting content discovered by the archive.
- dang 7y ago
  > A mechanism to save pages to the web archive has now been implemented. Just need to ping this URL: http://web.archive.org/save/<insert http://web.archive.org/save/<insert URL you want to save>. It's been on our list to do that for some time, but this should make it much easier. Thanks!
  - Sukotto 7y ago
    I hope you folks implement this, and also that YC sets a recurring donation to the archive. (Possibly tied to how many URLs you submit)
class4behavior 7y ago
Technically, a lot of content is cached/archived by online RSS services, like Inoreader or Newsblur, where users added full-text RSS feeds for HN.
flashman 7y ago
A third party could do this if they wished. Savepagenow is one of several wrappers that can save an arbitrary URL's contents to the Internet Archive: https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow Hook it up to RSS and away you go.

acqq 7y ago

> consider donating to the Internet Archive It is immensely important, especially as there is a strong trend to hide the content behind the paywalls and registration pages. Even if something is accessible today... And there are always forces who have an interest that some inconvenient data just disappear.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

Fantastic point. I personally would much rather support the Internet Archive than WF. Also, there is a 2:1 donor match thing happening now, making the value of each donation effectively triple. Moreover if your company matches 501(c) donations (mine does, at least up to something like $20k a year), you can have them match your donation too, effectively giving the archive a 4x your original donation.

lonelappde 7y ago
Matching doesn't "effectively triple" the donation, because the matched part is someone else's donation. Deceptive tactics like this are toxic to charitable giving culture.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  If the matching helps persuade people to donate, I'm all for it. The Internet Archive is a world wide treasure. Please donate! And it's really easy to set up an automatic monthly donation as I have done. One time donations are great. Ongoing income helps insure that this precious resource can continue to fulfill their mission.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    I’m just happy they have a monthly option :) most services seem to only consider wanting to give once.
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  If the donation is contingent on someone else donating first, semantics aside, it’s the same thing. My employer wouldn’t donate to the Internet Archive in the amount that I gave unless I did first.
zrm 7y ago
> Moreover if your company matches 501(c) donations (mine does, at least up to something like $20k a year), you can have them match your donation too, effectively giving the archive a 4x your original donation. Wouldn't it be 6x, assuming your company could have their donation tripled as well?

slim 7y ago

Wikipedia should put a banner to raise funds for internet archive every year

kohtatsu 7y ago

Donation link (currently being matched 2:1) https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/

tkgally 7y ago
Earlier this year, I created a simple "Donate to the Internet Archive" logo for a website and e-book that I compiled from 19th- and early 20th-century books archived by IA. The logo links to the above IA donation page. Perhaps others would like to add the logo and link to their sites: http://gally.net/jatsi/ http://gally.net/jatsi/

lonelappde 7y ago

Wikipedia requires available sources, not reliable sources. Any published website is acceptable, regardless of fact check it standards.

commoner 7y ago
Wikipedia's standards have tightened over time. Its current requirements are much stricter than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

rbanffy 7y ago

> consider donating to the Internet Archive instead. If you happen to have power to do that at a large cloud provider, consider donating storage space and data movement services. Having a backup of the Internet Archive on cloud providers would offer an additional safeguard against data loss.