Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Archive.is RFC

Page location

This page is currently located at "Wikipedia:Archive.is RFC". This feels like a strange place and page title to me. Perhaps this page could be made a subpage of Wikipedia:Requests for comment or Wikipedia:Citations or something. I dunno. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:48, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, it should probably be a subpage of one of those. Project space "root" pages are usually for things that will be more ongoing. equazcion ^(talk) 17:59, 21 Sep 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Archive.is, surely? GiantSnowman 15:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree, after reading RFC here; it's already out of the Talk page barn. --Lexein (talk) 06:46, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Coincidence with a significant portion of the vocal suporters

It seems to me that there's a specific trait that is shared by a great many of the supporters for Archive.is. Either they've been away for a very extended wikibreak, announced their leaving from Wikipedia permanently, IP addresses that are very familiar with minutiae of wiki policy, or have never edited as a consistent IP. I am not suggesting at this time to start any sort or sanctioning process, but I would like to propose at this time that the appropriate {{Not a ballot}} be applied to the page and specific instructions for the closing administrator be drafted to indicate that some participants suspect a organized campaign to override consensus is taking place. Hasteur (talk) 19:51, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Seems to me you're assuming bad faith again, and disregarding editors with very long history of high quality, on-policy edits. Your "instructions for closing administrator"? Who does that? That's nothing more than evidence of your extreme bias and refusal to let the process make its way. Still think I'm a sockpuppet, by the way? Ready to step up with that slimy accusation? Do, please, go for it. Just watch out for WP:Boomerang. --Lexein (talk) 20:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Lexin, It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it. If you are a regular editor who edits outside of this then you won't be affected by the externally coordinated campaign that seems to be occuring. When a IP address launches a community ban proposal against me having a very select and choice understanding of wiki policy, I am going to make the suggestion that the actions are being coordinated to override the consensus of wikipedia editors. Hasteur (talk) 20:08, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

• Hasteur, there's at least two individual IP editors here. There's one who has attempted to discuss this constructively; and one who is just here to troll. Lumping all of them together defies all the evidence. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 23:08, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
• User:Hasteur, I hope you learn sooner, rather than later, about civility and assuming good faith. I have low hope, in light of your insulting language above, but hope nonetheless. --Lexein (talk) 14:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oh, and I'm not Lexin, for the nth time. It's Lexein. Leave that other guy alone. --Lexein (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I think we should not worry about people supporting archive.is share some trait.

First, it needs to be clarified that there is no chance they are actually sock puppets: it wouldn't make sense for Rotlink to know ahead of time he would be banned (look at the casual technical talk about the bot here). So how could he prepare all these socks for it? Some of his sympathizers are many years old and have a lot of contributions. Rotlink is a programmer and could manage an "externally coordinated campaign" of continuing edits with proxies, but he isn't a social manipulator and does not have the time to maintain multiple socks with so many community connections. He certainly wont do it for precautionary measure. If he was so powerful, why couldn't he figure out how to get the bot approved?

Second, worries alone is not grounds for scrapping the poll system. It's hard to test the consensus another way. Every poll with so much conflict involved has dangers of meat puppetry and canvassing, and nothing makes this case significantly worse. Rotlink is no better at organizing a "campaign to override consensus" than anyone else.

Edit summary

Lukeno had serious reservations about my tone in my previous attack--and now that I think of it, I was not in g faith. I rewrote the point to not offend

DontClickMeName _talk^{contributions} 00:58, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Opposing motions

Why are people !voting for an "oppose", as it skews the numbers of those expressing support (bearing in mind WP:NOTAVOTE, of course) - if you disagree with a motion then simply propose an opposing one and !vote there. GiantSnowman 15:40, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

A couple of people tried adding opposing motions, but due to the usual rapidly-declining transient interest and (IMHO) WP:IDHT, they of course got no traction. I knew that would happen, so I didn't bother. Instead, I offered what I felt were sound counterarguments directly to the support !votes. Still, apparently, lead balloon. IMHO re-publicizing is the best bet for wider discussion. --Lexein (talk) 07:00, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Republicize this RFC

I think this RFC should be publicized a bit better. IMHO not enough of two classes of editors have joined the discussion:

a) editors who have used and cited archive.is but have never edited that page or read ANI or RFC requests, and

b) editors and administrators with direct experience with (as alleged by User:Kww) "spambots", "botnets", and proxies.

Just list it in some more areas, if possible. --Lexein (talk) 06:46, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I have boldly relisted this at WT:Linkrot and WT:Citing sources/Further considerations.

Please help publicize this at, perhaps, somewhere where editors are intimately familiar with regularly and accurately technically distinguishing between bots, botnets, manual scripting, sock-&meat-puppetry, proxies, VPNs, (or other), and expertly analyzing precisely the type of events, based on event sourcing, relative timing, and behavior exhibited. IMHO there is still information missing. Someone may know how to ferret it out. --Lexein (talk) 08:05, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Lexein is 100% correct, this was "publicized" in places that the majority of people involved in actually using these links would not see it, else I would have been here defending it. Completely irresponsible RFC considering its impact. DWB (talk) / Comment on Dishonored's FA nom! 23:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

RFC neutrality

I'd like some administrator to look over User:Kww's entire RFC proposal for neutrality, per WP:RFC, including opening paragraphs and "points to consider". They may seem neutral, but they are repetitively negative, and leave out key usability, of-use-to-Wikipedia, and uniqueness information: "archive.is page archives have been shown to be accurate, on a spot-checked basis", and "archive.is has apparently reliable service, having little or no downtime", "archive.is archives pages which archive.org cannot", "archive.is is not a crawler, and so does not honor robots.txt, but archived pages can be taken down by request, by clicking on the "Report abuse" link", as well as "We don't know the names of the owner(s) yet". Neutrality is important, per WP:RFC, and if individual statements can't be neutral, they should be balanced by statements which will provide a neutral overall view. My point is that this RFC puts blacklisting on the table, based on spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt ("FUD") including unsubstantiated accusations ("illegal", "botnet" and other nonsense) which have been echoed and allowed to stand by other similarly biased and uninformed editors, for the relatively minor offense of adding useful archives of fragile content which is not archived elsewhere. --Lexein (talk) 06:46, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

• @Lexein:, if you are trying to re-open this discussion, I support it. Tito☸Dutta 12:26, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

• That's from October 2013, during the RFC. I got shouted down by frightened villagers with torches. --Lexein (talk) 15:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Link to previous discussion

[1]

Should this link to previous discussion be shown? DontClickMeName _talk^{contributions} 19:13, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Just discovered this impacting me ... statement of support added to User page

See User:Ceyockey#Linkrot_and_archiving_links --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:51, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Edit revert

An IP has deleted large portion in this article. I am unable to undo it because of Archive.is URLs. Tito☸Dutta 12:05, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Rollback still works, so I rolled it back. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:10, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks. I had added Artchive.is links in many articles. All these articles may face similar problem now. Archive.is is faster and better and provide more options than web archive. I did not know about this RFC. Tito☸Dutta 12:23, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

• You're right, Tito, but as the RfC clearly showed, too many people won't listen to any sensible comments about Archive.is' usefulness. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 12:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Opinion

Rotlink started to make lots of unnecessary edits, adding links to Archive.is, for having backup links for references used in Wikipedia. Those edits were not necessary but they were not disruptive also. So it can't be spam. There is a much better solution than adding millions of links to Archive.is - we can use a gadget that after each external link, it can add links to Archive.is, Archive.org, WebCite and any other archiving website. It's a much better option because it can show archives from multiple archive providers, and it doesn't imply any editing of articles, so it's completely clean. You can see here how easy is to make such a gadget: Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals#Archives of external links. In fact it only has to be installed, because it's already made.

Verifiability of Wikipedia's articles is something fundamental. Therefore archiving links should be a priority for Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia should have it's own archiving website, and it should find funds for it. Until we get there, Rotlink did a great favor to Wikipedia by archiving links on Archive.is for free. He probably wanted more visibility for his website and that's why he made those mass edits. Instead of chasing away someone who is doing us such a big favor, we should ask him to implement a better solution. Also, instead of Wikipedia making it's own archiving website, maybe it can outsource the task to Archive.is, for a fraction of the cost.

Refusing a free archive is offensive to Wikipedia editors who add information based on sources, since the information can be deleted if/when the sources become unavailable (Hey, can you prove those statements you put in the article are true? Look, you have no sources!). Every day, more and more information is supported only by online newspapers. Once those online sources are gone, the information can't be verified anymore, so anyone can claim the information is simply invented. Then all your contributions can be deleted, because there are no sources. Then what the heck we are doing here? Any Wikipedia editor should feel comfortable that Wikipedia cares for his work. —  Ark25  (talk) 16:18, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Any alternatives to Archive.is?

I have just become aware of this entire discussion when I tried to archive something with archive.is and noticed the pink warning box at the top of the preview page.
In December, I added an archive for the beyonce.com/credits website to Beyoncé (album) article. I would gladly replace it with another archive, but I have trouble finding a good alternative to archive.is, as both webcitation.org and web.archive.org can't handle that website:

• http://www.webcitation.org/6Nc1LYqZX
• https://web.archive.org/web/20131215180239/http://www.beyonce.com/credits

and archive.is could:

• http://archive.is/ELARL

Any ideas? — Mayast (talk) 23:27, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

• I took at look at the page source for https://web.archive.org/web/20131215065459/http://www.beyonce.com/credits/ and the content is there, it is just not visible in the archived web page. The information on the page is archived and available via source inspection, and this could be included in the reference note; this would be sufficient, in my opinion. Not sure why it is not rendering, but it might have something to do with revision of the original source lines:

<meta content='Beyonce' name='description'>

<link href='//cloud.typography.com/7425472/767184/css/fonts.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

<link href="http://beyassets.beyonce.com/assets/application-bee2f62c80b91ad3c0436fcaefe66db0.css" media="all" rel="stylesheet" />

...by revised lines in archive.org...

<meta content='Beyonce' name='description'>

line has been deleted

<link href="/web/20131215065459cs_/http://assets.beyonce.com//assets/application-5b48340fe4484cf780e219d9cad1567b.css" media="all" rel="stylesheet" />

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. So, what's better: using an archive that renders the page properly, but some users find it untrustworthy? Or an archive where the page will appear as just a black background with a menu to all the readers who don't know how to check the page's source code? I think I would rather stick to the first one (just in this particular case) or keep looking for a better alternative. — Mayast (talk) 00:16, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

The page with credits for Beyoncé is now dead. In the mean time, the archive.is url (http://archive.is/ELARL) has already been removed from some of the Beyoncé-related articles. It's really fantastic that we get rid of dangerous links, but I was asking for an advice on real alternatives to archive.is (with proper rendering!) when there was still time to archive the page, and now there isn't. However, the credits for the songs are now at http://www.beyonce.com/album/beyonce/?media_view=songs, but with all the flash animation (or whatever that is) I don't know how to archive that. Does anyone has an idea? — Mayast (talk) 23:27, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Aleph Archives supports archiving web-pages with Flash.

Archive.is in the wiki family

Unfortunately I came across this after the discussion was closed however there remains a solution that doesn't seem to have been discussed - namely that archive.is be brought into the wiki family, with wikipedia (or a subsidiary) running its own archiving service, which won't be vulnerable to it suddenly disappearing, or not archiving, can, like the archive.is archiving single pages rather than entire sites, will be guaranteed to be free from adverts and malicious code. Are there any legal reasons it cannot be done? If it is done in house, it could also then be extended to all links, finally ending link rot for good.NiD.29 (talk) 17:41, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on this, but I think legal issues wouldn't be a problem. However, I don't think I could say the same thing about money – Wikimedia Foundation would have to pay for all the extra servers. — Mayast (talk) 17:49, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

If just two people are paying for, and running the archive that is in dispute, I can't see that being a large expense compared to wikipedia as a whole, and having the control to ensure that content is displayed correctly, and without any alterations would be useful - as it is right now, any of the archive sites could be making changes to the pages they archive, and unless the author of the page were to check, no-one would have any way of knowing. With wikipedia's document history, that could be avoided. Not to mention the downtime and spottiness of the archiving process. Wikipedia could automatically archive a page as the link is added to a page, and give the reader the choice of the original or the archived version.NiD.29 (talk) 05:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Useful nonetheless

Is Archive.is blocked permanently, or are we awaiting further action from someone? One thing this service has over others is that you can ask it to archive a link from Google's cache, and it will store a copy of that archive. Google only caches pages for a few weeks, and they cannot be archived by WebCite or the Wayback Machine... Adabow (talk) 09:19, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

ANI Notice

After reporting at this talk page, I have started a thread at ANI Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Archive.is_headache (this post may get archived in few days) Tito☸Dutta 18:19, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

It has been archived here. Oliv0 (talk) 10:47, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

New RFC

I've started a RFC here to try to rectify this issue. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 19:35, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

WP:AN

Raised at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Archive.is, the issue of bulk removal of links involving archive.is, without any attempt to replace them with an acceptable archive service. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:01, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Salvaging arhive.is links?

Is there any possible way for links and information from archived pages on arhive.is to be salvaged? I only discovered the fact that it had been banned today, and I have archived quite a number of articles there and most of the original links are no longer working and not available on web.archive.org or webcitation.org. Any suggestions? SyFuel^Ignite_Burned 09:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Preventing article creation prevents refactoring existing material

I find that an unacceptable situation. This should have been addressed when technical "solutions" were sought for this problem. Samsara (FA • FP) 06:00, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

http://archive.today

I've tried adding an external link to http://archive.today/DGD2 because it contains valuable videos that are not viewable through the equivalent Archive.org link. But the link I use is filtered, and explains it is due to this RFC. Is it really necessary to block a site which archives stuff that other pages do not? FunkMonk (talk) 04:21, 12 January 2015 (UTC)