Web archiving: Difference between revisions

Unlike paper documents, or digital media on physical carriers like CD or [[:Category:DVD|DVD]], information presented on {{tag|website}}s (including [[What is a Wiki|wiki sites]]) are not only easily accessible via the internet; they are also easy to change, and prone to erosion of many kinds: from [[Vandal|hacker attacks]], to any possible reason why a [[:Category:Server|server]] may be damaged, or a project may fail.  In order to counteract those chances for loss of information once available, there have been numerous attempts to build {{tag|archives}} to preserve content in digital form, and make said {{tag|archived}} content available via internet and other channels.

Since [[WikiIndex]] is not only meant to act as a kind of 'yellow pages' for <big>'''[[:Category:All|all]]'''</big> available [[wiki]] sites on the internet, but also for collecting information about the '[[wikisphere]]' in general and its history, we <u>do</u> keep [[article]] pages about wikis that succumbed to [[:Category:Dead|failure]], and if possible, document how their rise <u>and</u> fall has happened. This kind of wiki history shall hopefully help [[:Category:Wiki people|wiki people]] to build better wikis in more stable projects in the immediate future.

Regarding any wiki sites that we do already have an article page about, we do <u>not</u> delete said wiki article of a failed wiki. We keep their article here on WikiIndex after they became unavailable. However, we do not simply (and only) move them into [[:category:Dead]]. If possible, we add to our wiki article page URLs and / or [[interwiki]] links to an archiving project for the said dead wiki site; where at least meaningful parts of that wiki have been preserved. We at WikiIndex then go on to re-categorise that wiki article from [[:category:Active]] (or similar) to, hopefully, [[:category:Archived]].  Naturally, this requires, that someone had previously done something to add actual information about said wiki site to any of those archiving services whilst the wiki site was still live and publicly available on the internet; and crucially, some or all of the actual <u>content</u> of wiki site is archived (rather than just its [[wiki main page]] and similar 'headline' pages).  Accordingly, it is therefore good practice to make sure that at least one [[#List of web and/or wiki archiving services|archive project]] is 'informed' about that wiki site, ideally, whenever you create a new article page here on WikiIndex about another wiki site.

*[[Archive.org]] — also known as the ''Internet Archive WaybackMachine''; the service we use most

*[[archive.is]] — also known as ''archive.today'', formerly known as ''Webpage archive''; a similar site, with slightly differing and lesser (though equally valuable) features than Archive.org

*{{Wp|WebCite}} — science oriented archiving service, at the English Wikipedia