D&D General Is WotC archive server no more?

[darjr]

So many cool things there. What can we do to preserve that content?

 

[Bacon Bits]

Holy cow! I've been looking for that specific article in the first Tweet for 5 years! Every time I dug through archive.org it took me to blank pages or 404 errors.

Also, yes, I've been angry with WotC for their treatment of the pre-5e D&D site since they changed it when 5e released. I understand that you need to change the way your content is served up, but it's not difficult to build a shim that maps URLs.

 

[Morrus]

Problem is, even if they don't support it any more, it's still copyrighted material.

 

[dave2008]

Holy cow! I've been looking for that specific article in the first Tweet for 5 years! Every time I dug through archive.org it took me to blank pages or 404 errors.

Also, yes, I've been angry with WotC for their treatment of the pre-5e D&D site since they changed it when 5e released. I understand that you need to change the way your content is served up, but it's not difficult to build a shim that maps URLs.

Well now you have it! Also, can anyone tell me how to use the waybackmachine. I can never seem to find what I am looking for.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Well now you have it! Also, can anyone tell me how to use the waybackmachine. I can never seem to find what I am looking for.

In theory, you find a dead link, go to archive.org, paste it in the search box, and then pick a date in the past where the crawler captured the page and view your content. It doesn't work well with modern responsive design, however, so the last 10 years have been difficult to capture.

A general keyword search basically never works.

I've had about a 50% success rate in general.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Problem is, even if they don't support it any more, it's still copyrighted material.

If someone were operating a permanent archive, copyright allows it. Archives preservation is a valid exception. It's a little more nuanced than that -- you have to archive stuff that you can't reasonably buy a copy of, and it has to be a permanent addition to the archive -- but it's exactly how archive.org works.

 

[darjr]

So is there a way to encourage archive sites? Donations?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Holy cow! I've been looking for that specific article in the first Tweet for 5 years! Every time I dug through archive.org it took me to blank pages or 404 errors.

Yeah, me too. I just reread it and think it is basically nonsense anyway... but I'll leave that for another thread.

 

[darjr]

That whole thread has cool linkz

 

[Alzrius]

That's incredibly disappointing. I still enjoy older editions, such as the Magic Item Compendium design diary about the "Big Six" magic items, and the fact that WotC pulled the plug on them is sad. I'm just glad the Wayback Machine archives are there.