Can someone eli5 archives for me? I've been archive.is what I could, where do these pages go/how can I put these to use. Most pages have been archived, thanks to all who know what they're doing.
Web archiving sites are used to make copies of an original web page, they're a bit like photocopiers and take a 'scan' of the page at a single point in time. So for example an archive of a web page scanned last year can be compared to one scanned today.
The purpose is so that if the original web page is edited, moved, or deleted people can refer to the archived copy. Unlike taking screenshots these archived copies of web pages contain the original page code, making them useful for proper citations since they're not open to user tampering like screenshots are.
The most well-known web archive site, archive.org is run by the Internet Archive which has been saving copies of web pages periodically and automatically since 1996.
There is another, separate archiving site: archive.is. Instead of automatically archiving web pages it relies on users to manually archive pages at will. The site was created by an individual who wanted the archives more censorship-proof. To explain: sites can tell archiving sites at any time 'sorry, I don't want you to archive this site or page', and the archiving site can either respect the wish or ignore it. Archive.org respects it*, archive.is ignores it. So in that way archive.is is more censorship-proof.
To find an archived page users can go to an archive site and paste in the original web address and check for archived copies of that page. So for example if I wanted to look for an older version of the Google.com home page I could paste in the address to one of these archiving sites and check what it looked like at an earlier point in time, and also link others to it.
Hope that explained it well enough.
*From what I understand Archive.org will still archive such sites in the background just not make the pages publicly accessible.
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PedePizza ago
Can someone eli5 archives for me? I've been archive.is what I could, where do these pages go/how can I put these to use. Most pages have been archived, thanks to all who know what they're doing.
Didot ago
Web archiving sites are used to make copies of an original web page, they're a bit like photocopiers and take a 'scan' of the page at a single point in time. So for example an archive of a web page scanned last year can be compared to one scanned today.
The purpose is so that if the original web page is edited, moved, or deleted people can refer to the archived copy. Unlike taking screenshots these archived copies of web pages contain the original page code, making them useful for proper citations since they're not open to user tampering like screenshots are.
The most well-known web archive site, archive.org is run by the Internet Archive which has been saving copies of web pages periodically and automatically since 1996.
There is another, separate archiving site: archive.is. Instead of automatically archiving web pages it relies on users to manually archive pages at will. The site was created by an individual who wanted the archives more censorship-proof. To explain: sites can tell archiving sites at any time 'sorry, I don't want you to archive this site or page', and the archiving site can either respect the wish or ignore it. Archive.org respects it*, archive.is ignores it. So in that way archive.is is more censorship-proof.
To find an archived page users can go to an archive site and paste in the original web address and check for archived copies of that page. So for example if I wanted to look for an older version of the Google.com home page I could paste in the address to one of these archiving sites and check what it looked like at an earlier point in time, and also link others to it.
Hope that explained it well enough.
*From what I understand Archive.org will still archive such sites in the background just not make the pages publicly accessible.
PedePizza ago
Thanks boss