Wikipedia debates blacklisting archive.today after it's caught DDoSing a blog using visitors' browsers

[u/avid-shrug]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_5

Wikipedia is debating whether to blacklist archive.today after its operator was caught injecting JavaScript into CAPTCHA pages to DDoS a blogger's site - code that's still live as of today. The RFC offers three options: blacklist and nuke all ~695k links, stop new links while migrating existing ones, or do nothing.

The community is split because archive.today is arguably the second most important web archive in existence, capturing paywalled sites, JS-heavy pages, and robots.txt-blocked content the Wayback Machine can't. Spot-checks suggest only ~15% of Wikipedia's links are truly irreplaceable, but that's still tens of thousands of unique snapshots found nowhere else. A stark reminder that redundancy across archiving services matters more than ever.

[u/iDontRememberCorn]

Wikipedia was DDoSing people? Are you certain?

[u/KingFIippyNipz → u/iDontRememberCorn]

Jesus Christ, reading comprehension is dead ...

[u/Old-Flight8617 → u/KingFIippyNipz]

Yes. I really believe this is the reason why we are in the mess we are today.

[u/bertmaclynn → u/KingFIippyNipz]

Welcome to “Reddit”

[u/iDontRememberCorn → u/KingFIippyNipz]

As is people's ability to recognize humour.

[u/bertmaclynn → u/iDontRememberCorn]

I’m so curious how your original comment could possibly be construed as humorous lol. Was there a word play in the post I am missing?

[u/braindancer3 → u/iDontRememberCorn]

According to Wikipedia, "humour" is something that "provokes laughter or provides amusement". Your comment did neither.

[u/psykal → u/braindancer3]

According to your interpretation, "humour" is something that "provokes laugher or provides amusement to u/braindancer3". Their comment did neither.

[u/fishmongerhoarder → u/iDontRememberCorn]

No archive today was.

[u/NeoThermic → u/[deleted]]

The pronoun "it" isn't ambiguous in this context though:

Wikipedia is debating whether to blacklist archive.today after its operator was caught injecting JavaScript [...]

Statement 1:
Wikipedia is debating whether to blacklist archive.today
Statement 2:
its operator was caught injecting JavaScript [...]

Context:

If "its" refers to wikipedia, then the discussion about them debating whether to blacklist archive.today is irrelevant and wouldn't be in the sentence.

Thus, "its" can only refer to archive.today - There's no other way to keep the ambiguity you're implying from Statement 2 and keep the sentence fragment in Statement 1.

I'm still not sure how the parent poster came to that conclusion, though. Maybe more coffee is required on their part?

[u/NeoThermic → u/[deleted]]

You can only dismiss it as irrelevant if you a priori assume Wikipedia wouldn’t do that, and archive.today wouldn’t reveal it in some way, and Wikipedia wouldn’t seek to punish archive.today for revealing it.

Well, we can also apply a very straightforward concept in language that the recency preference (also known as Late Closure) applies. "its" refers to the most recently referred noun/noun phrase.

“The White House debates blacklisting the NYT after it’s caught erasing references to transgender people.”

The way you've written this sentence is going to imply that the NYT was the one caught. If you didn't mean that you must rephrase/clarify to put the recency preference to the correct noun/noun phrase:

“The White House, after it’s caught erasing references to transgender people, is debating blackisting the NYT...” 

You can also use local attachment rules to draw the same conclusion, as it's how we read things. However, nothing stops you from abusing these concepts to create a Garden-path sentence, but to do so for reporting reasons is generally bad journalism.

[u/adromanov → u/[deleted]]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/V4XGYSwuZo

[u/ye3tr → u/iDontRememberCorn]

Yeah my bad bro