Following several consecutive debates on Discord, which has first resulted in the creation of a new collaboration project, and in the a ongoing rework of the social media screenshots page, and also to re-engage with my archivedate tweak from mid-2024, I'd like to propose an update to our archival policy on Wookieepedia:Sourcing. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Contents
Introduction
Archiveurl and archivefile
The first and main point is about a change of course in our archival culture, which had previously seen us rely in part on archive.today, while in retrospect we have no concrete reason to trust this service with… check notes …more than 18 thousand citations linked to them. While the service is very helpful regarding the archiving of social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky), we simply don't have a clue about them: who control it, who finance it, etc. Nothing. They could be gone tomorrow, and we would be left with nothing.
New avenues have been explored. We have started using ghostarchive.org, although it mirror the same issues as archive.today, and cannot be relied heavily. Some options have also been dropped because they would either requires private accounts or download the files themselves. However, it seems we have come to an informal agreement that, while we will continue to rely on the Wayback Machine—as there is no serious alternative at the moment nor explicit threat to this archival system— we will stop to rely on archive.today (or the new ghostarchive.org) alone for archives that cannot be made on the Wayback Machine (mostly social media) by requiring that citation templates using archiveurl must also be accompanied by a screenshot (archivefile), at least on {{WebCite}} and social media citation templates.
Also, there is an little tweak to the last rule of that section, to modernize the wording and better align with our citation templates standard.
Archivedate
Secondly, this is a good occasion as any to deal with an earlier proposal of mine. The TL;DR is that among all our citation templates, only {{WebCite}} display a time of archive (archived from the original on month day, year) extrapolated from the archivedate values. It's also the practice on status articles to force this value when the archive is based on an archiveurl by miss-using the archivedate parameter with a date format (YYYY-MM-DD). I would note that I've seen one instance of WebCite using YYYY-MM-DD this way with no correct archive, which made it slip past our categorization for missing archive. See the second example ("Using |quote=") in the template for an example of this use, although documentation does not mention this otherwise.
While there is indeed a need for using different versions of an archived article, this is absolutely not the purpose of archivedate alone. For other templates, this is managed thanks to the use of "oldversion=1" to escape the archivedates being standardized with the one in ArchiveAccess. However, WebCite just isn't equipped with something like that, which should be corrected (Cade? :P ).
Draft
Vote 1
On Wookieepedia:Sourcing, section "Archival links", remove striken text and add bolded text:
- When citing an external link, a permanent archival link (also called a backup link) must be included in the reference. Use Internet Archive's Wayback Machine
or archive.todayfor this purpose. In case the Wayback Machine cannot archive a web document, use another archive service, such as archive.today or ghostarchive.org.- Furthermore, if using a service other than the Wayback Machine for archiving a web document with {{WebCite}} or any social media citation templates, an accompanying screenshot must also be uploaded to Wookieepedia and linked in the reference itself, and the screenshot must be added to either Wookieepedia:Website screenshots or Wookieepedia:Social media screenshots. However, a social media listing within the "External links" section does not require an associated screenshot, with the exception of {{LinkedIn}}.
*Social media posts must likewise include a backup link. In the instance a social media post cannot be archived through one of the aforementioned archiving services, an accompanying screenshot of the post must alternatively be uploaded to Wookieepedia and linked in the reference itself.- The Wookieepedia community, particularly the article-reviewing panels through the article-nomination processes, may judge the validity of expired external links, including social media posts, that cannot produce a backup link or screenshot. The original URL must be provided in the reference,
accompanied by a note indicating that its content has expired, such as (Information no longer available).and the|nobackup=and|nolive=parameters must be used to indicate the content is expired and no longer available.
- The Wookieepedia community, particularly the article-reviewing panels through the article-nomination processes, may judge the validity of expired external links, including social media posts, that cannot produce a backup link or screenshot. The original URL must be provided in the reference,
Vote 2
On {{WebCite}} (through Module:WebCite), remove the function that display a time of archival ('archived from ['..url..' the original]'/' on '..makeDateLink(waybackDate)), and replace it with the conventional (backup link) display.
Discussion
- I will also acknowledge here some criticism I have seen raised toward the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine. Yes, putting so much trust into them is not ideal, I understand that. 2024 has been quite taxing to IA, with the settlement this last September of the lawsuit against several book publishers (which had some of us a bit scared), the ongoing lawsuit against the music industry (see this article, and keep in mind that, while that stupidly high fine requested against IA is concerning, it has very low chance to settle for that amount and hurt the WM; I'm keeping track of it just in case anyway), and the recent DDOS attack. And yes, it has some technical hiccups. But we will keep working with them for as long as needed, because we just don't have any serious alternative nor should we feel that there is a real, imminent, threat on the WM at this moment, and that our effort are better spent to deal with our over-reliance on archive.today. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
- Giving our extensive ecosystem of citation templates which includes web archives, I did not feel confident pushing the new screenshot rule globally except for WebCite and social media, as for some templates, such as for toy and card games, requiring a screenshot would simply be an unnecessary additional burden. However, if someone can pin point another category of citation templates that would benefit from this new rule, I'd happily add it to the draft. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
- The reasons why we still aim to keep using archive services other than the Wayback Machine while also using screenshot is because several editors were concerned that screenshots, if delivered alone, could be tempered with. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
- Regarding external links, I've made sure the policy wasn't requiring screenshots there because that would just be a burden to editors when it's basically an ever-changing medium and that we could not save the posts that way anyway; though {{LinkedIn}} is an necessary exception, as we simply have no other choice available. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
- To resume the technical updates required here: (1) {{WebCite}} needs to be updated to includes something similar to "oldversion=1"... although I'm unsure if we have explicit needs for that at the moment, since I've only been presented with example necessitating this on other templates (2) {{WebCite}} and social media citation templates need to includes a maintenance category trigger to identify when archiveurl is used without an accompanying screenshot (with the exception of LinkedIn, who can't be archived except for screenshot since some times now...), but this category trigger needs not to react to social media instances in External links... (3) Change the display on those template to display both the screenshot and the archivelink (4) If the archivedate change is voted, change Module:WebCite display from (archived from the original on month day, year) to (backup link), like every other citation template. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
- Little note regarding the maintenance category trigger for citation, it should only trigger with an archiveurl missing an archivefile, not the other way around, simply because we have nolive cases where the page was never saved outside of our screenshots. Furthermore, we're going to need to find a way to examine our use of archiveurl on other templates (such a {{SW}}) in the future to turn archiveurl into archivedate whenever we can. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 11:49, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
- Proposals looking good to me. Imperators II(Talk) 12:20, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
- As long as we still have the option to use sites other than wayback alongside the screenshots then that sounds good to me. Ayrehead02 (talk) 09:08, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
- Per Ayre Lewisr (talk) 04:19, 17 February 2025 (UTC)
- Also per Ayre —spookywillowwtalk 20:44, 16 March 2025 (UTC)