Web archiving
Web archiving is the attempt to collect and preserve content available on the internet AKA World Wide Web.
Unlike paper documents or digital media on physical carriers like CD or DVD, information presented on websites are not only easily accessible via internet but also easy to change and prone to erosion of many kinds from hacker attacks to any possible reason why a 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 archives to preserve content in digital form and make those content available via internet and other channels.
Since WikiIndex is not only meant to act as a kind of yellow pages for available wikis on the net, but also for collecting information about the Wikisphere in general and its history, we do keep entries about wikis that got lost and if possible about how their rise and fall has happened. This kind of wiki history shall help wiki people to build better wikis in more stable projects.
Regarding wikis we got a page about we therefore do not simply throw them into the Category:Dead after they became unavailable. If possible we add links to an archiving project where at least parts of that wiki have been preserved and shift that wiki article from Active to. Naturally this requires, that someone had done something to add those information about that wiki to any of those archives while the wiki content was still available on the net. Therefore it is good practice to make sure that at least one archive project knows about that wiki, whenever You create a new article about another wiki here.
List of web archiving services
- Web archiving initiatives on Wikipedia
- Archive.org the service we use most
- archive.today
- en:WebCite science oriented