Forum policies and etiquette on archiving?

[space_dinos]

Hello all,

I am very new here, and have been browsing some of the older threads regarding cold cases and have run into many a link that no longer lead to anything, and I am wondering if there has since been any forum policies implemented in order to archive links and images so that they may still be accessible years down the road, long after the sources may have changed or have been deleted. If so, are there sanctioned methods for archiving, do's and don'ts, specific archival websites to use or avoid, or just advice on doing so, etc?

Especially for these cold cases it is sad to see an empty link in a case in which you never know what might spark someone to provide a new lead to investigators.

Thanks

 

[Gemmie]

Hello all,

I am very new here, and have been browsing some of the older threads regarding cold cases and have run into many a link that no longer lead to anything, and I am wondering if there has since been any forum policies implemented in order to archive links and images so that they may still be accessible years down the road, long after the sources may have changed or have been deleted. If so, are there sanctioned methods for archiving, do's and don'ts, specific archival websites to use or avoid, or just advice on doing so, etc?

Especially for these cold cases it is sad to see an empty link in a case in which you never know what might spark someone to provide a new lead to investigators.

Thanks

Welcome to WS, @space_dinos!

I'm sure there are other ways, but one way I've access dead links is via websites like the Wayback machine. I've been fairly successful finding what I want that way.

 

[Fraize]

Hello all,

I am very new here, and have been browsing some of the older threads regarding cold cases and have run into many a link that no longer lead to anything, and I am wondering if there has since been any forum policies implemented in order to archive links and images so that they may still be accessible years down the road, long after the sources may have changed or have been deleted. If so, are there sanctioned methods for archiving, do's and don'ts, specific archival websites to use or avoid, or just advice on doing so, etc?

Especially for these cold cases it is sad to see an empty link in a case in which you never know what might spark someone to provide a new lead to investigators.

Thanks

This is 100% on my todo list... I recovered a very old thread and found it had a bunch of broken links -- news stories that have moved to other locations, websites that don't exist any more. Recovering those links was laborious and time-consuming. The Wayback Machine is a great resource, but what was extra fun was determining what the website looked like on the day it was posted. Often, especially in the case of crime-stories, the webpage gets updated with new information making the post linking to it lose some context; old dismissed suspects, theories, and other facts that color the original post.

I tried hard to make sure that was preserved, but it wasn't easy! Rewarding, but not easy.

There are probably some automations I can implement that would either go through every single post, check if there are any links, make sure the links still work, try to recover them using other archival tools. I've even considered creating an archival tool built directly into Websleuths.com, but there are copyright issues involved, so I've avoided doing that.

 

[space_dinos]

This is 100% on my todo list... I recovered a very old thread and found it had a bunch of broken links -- news stories that have moved to other locations, websites that don't exist any more. Recovering those links was laborious and time-consuming. The Wayback Machine is a great resource, but what was extra fun was determining what the website looked like on the day it was posted. Often, especially in the case of crime-stories, the webpage gets updated with new information making the post linking to it lose some context; old dismissed suspects, theories, and other facts that color the original post.

I tried hard to make sure that was preserved, but it wasn't easy! Rewarding, but not easy.

There are probably some automations I can implement that would either go through every single post, check if there are any links, make sure the links still work, try to recover them using other archival tools. I've even considered creating an archival tool built directly into Websleuths.com, but there are copyright issues involved, so I've avoided doing that.

I wish I could offer you some assistance on this front but I am far from tech savvy. It took me more time than I'd like to admit just to figure out that you can actually view the archived pages on Wayback Machine if you clicked on the dates and time stamps rather than it just showing me a bunch of useless calendars

I don't doubt it's a difficult problem to solve! Thank you for your efforts!