Deja Vu on the Wayback Machine!

[CuseFan]

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/tech/internet-archives-deleted-websites-wayback-machine/index.html?utm_source=business_ribbon

I had never heard of the wayback machine until Lois Baker mentioned it in a response to someone back on 1/29 and this morning I see this article. Nothing earth-shattering, just found it interesting (eerie?) that something that has been around for a while, but which I never heard of before, now pops up to me twice in three weeks. Odd coincidence or message from the universe LOL?

[Peter Gulia]

Many academics and some lawyers preserve websites using https://perma.cc/, operated by Harvard College.

[C. B. Zeller]

Sounds like you are experiencing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon!

[Lois Baker]

One of the really nice things about the Wayback Machine is that it automatically scrapes pretty much all of the federal government websites, all pages, all the time.  

It also automatically scrapes a whole host of other websites, somewhat regularly (i.e., not necessarily every day).  Wayback also offers an API for automated bulk archiving and retrieval. And of course, individual pages can be submitted/archived by anyone with web access.  And most of the archived pages/sites are functional - meaning most of the links on archived pages themselves connect to archived copies of those linked pages.

There are other archives (in addition to perma.cc, there's archive.today), but AFAIK, web.archive.org is the only one that is working to save basically functional websites (not just individual pages), and without human intervention.  And it goes back ... forever (in internet terms).  Here's 12/10/1997 ... 11/2/1996 ... and 10/30/1996.

(In addition to the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive provides a repository of text, music, software and more -- it's a real treasure.)

[CuseFan]

3 hours ago, C. B. Zeller said:

Sounds like you are experiencing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon!

Thanks for the diagnosis, I think. What do I owe you for that? If you're suggesting I have some mental issues, tell me something I don't know! Of course now that you brought that to my attention I'm probably going to see that phenomenon pop up again soon - so thanks for that! All kidding aside, interesting stuff all the way around.