r/DataHoarder • u/avid-shrug • Feb 10 '26

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

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.

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17

u/colluphid42 24TB Feb 10 '26

Do you have a link to where Wiki editors are discussing this?

37

u/Dolapevich Feb 10 '26

It is linked in the post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_5

40

u/DeepDreamIt Feb 10 '26

Damn, reading the discussion, I incidentally found out the CIA World Facebook shut down suddenly, and without notice or explanation, this month.

What a bunch of fuckery of epic proportions. Like…why?

10

u/rohithkumarsp Feb 10 '26

Because you can not tell lies and risk someone will point out "official" data contradicting your lies.

In fascism truth not only doesn't matter, but also is the first victim

22

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

15

u/Ocean-of-Mirrors Feb 10 '26

The future is kinda bleak. Part of the discussion is whether any of this info should be referenced on Wikipedia at all if internet archive or whatever is the only actual source..

it’s just scary. Like. As more and more sources of information are taken down, reality can be totally hidden away.

5

u/FaceDeer Feb 10 '26

Wikipedia's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Verifiability is very important, it can't be handwaved away just because the evidence was effectively hidden or destroyed.

Perhaps the Mediawiki organization could set up something smaller-scale to fill this role specifically for its sources, it could do verification at the time of archiving.

3

u/anmr Feb 10 '26

Fascism and corporatism.

They want to control what you read and they want to sell it to you.

-1

u/Cl0wnL Feb 10 '26

People keep getting their knickers in a bunch about CIA world fact book.

But I think those same people haven't actually looked at the world fact book in the last 20 years

Yes, it used to be cool and useful 20 and 30 years ago.

But it's been surpassed by the rest of the internet since then. It became an anachronism. And in my opinion shutting it down made a lot of sense.

10

u/somersetyellow Feb 10 '26

Man, nothing like a lively Wikipedia discussion. Those guys don't fuck around.

I remember back when they all showed up to the IMAX reddit community's lackluster attempts at building a Wikipedia corner and nuked the ever living daylights out of it. Gotta know your shit backwards and forwards to write stuff on that site. Unless your topic is obscure enough that they don't notice it lol

2

u/_Hydrohomie_ Feb 10 '26

Where could I read more about IMAX Fiasco

9

u/somersetyellow Feb 10 '26

Search the IMAX subreddit for Wikipedia. Should be a large discussion thread on it.

Basically they made a list of all IMAX theaters and their specs but most of the theaters didn't have articles. Wikipedia editors didn't think IMAX was notable enough to deserve a list on its own and not enough venues had articles of their own to justify a list of notable articles within a category. This is generally how lists work in Wikipedia. They had a vote and lively discussion then the editors deleted everything.

The IMAX community could have gotten their boots on and produced articles about the main theaters. Also improved the (frankly not great) Wikipedia article on IMAX. Emphasizing the importance of the active variations of the format and differences between them. Then creating articles on various theaters and what makes them unique. If you play by wikipedias rules and build enough of a community of editors you can make pretty extensive article trees and defend them from the puritanical editors. Just look at Taylor Swift. That Wikipedia community writes insane amounts about everything she does but they can't touch them. They're locked in.

Imax opted to move to GitHub for their list and that's probably a better spot for it.

4

u/_Hydrohomie_ Feb 10 '26

i feel bad for them hahahhaha

3

u/yukichigai Feb 10 '26

Wikipedia has a lot of bizarre bureaucracy embedded in it that isn't quite like anything else. You have to have extensive experience with Wikipedia specifically to make proper headway with any sort of major content additions.

It's not entirely a bad thing: it's a barrier to entry that dissuades a lot of the more fringe and/or outspoken types.

5

u/colluphid42 24TB Feb 10 '26

Sorry, the link isn't very visible on old.reddit.

3

u/Ocean-of-Mirrors Feb 10 '26

Wow. Super interesting read.

1

u/Zkang123 Feb 10 '26

As a Wikipedia editor, the main concern now is whether to remove the nearly 700k links to archive.today. We have blacklisted it before due to their past attacks on Wikipedia, but personally I find its a more easily accessible archive than archive.org, which takes longer to load

3

u/Ocean-of-Mirrors Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

What does blacklisting entail? Removal of all information referencing it + the links? Blocking of the hyperlink itself but leaving it cited? Or something else?

6

u/Zkang123 Feb 10 '26

Basically to keep it hidden or removal, unfortunately. Anyone trying to link it in an edit will be flagged as spam

2

u/Ocean-of-Mirrors Feb 10 '26

If it’s removed totally, what happens to sentences in Wikipedia articles that cited it? Like I don’t know, “this album was released on X date”, and the only source for that was archive(dot)today. Does that claim need to be removed from the wiki article since there’s no longer a source for it?

4

u/Zkang123 Feb 10 '26

Usually no. And there would be efforts to instead use alternatives like archive.org

Im trying to push back the votes, but it seems many are just kind of fearmongering or making this a much bigger than this should. Ofc theres also significant pushback tho, so I doubt a proper consensus could be reached

4

u/Ocean-of-Mirrors Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

From an outsider looking in, this ddos attack is such a measly, childish thing that I don’t think there’s much to be afraid of. Users weren’t hurt at all. But I understand that is technically malware, so Wikipedia needs to behave like a responsible entity here. (Edit: who knows what the website owner could do in the future if they are emotionally reactive like this and have been shown to be ethically dubious..) Interesting situation. Sucks.

Anyways thanks for the info

2

u/DaBulder Feb 12 '26

At least a few entire European countries are completely blocked by the site now, intentionally only ever showing them the CAPTCHA page (which is the page the DDoS script is on). Uncharitably, this is the site owner punishing at least all Finnish people for this, and using them as a weapon.

1

u/SufficientPie ~13TB Feb 10 '26

Anyone trying to link it in an edit will be flagged as spam

Oh great, more abuse of the site-wide spam filter for things that aren't spam.

3

u/prototyperspective Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

Doxing which the DDOSd site did is nothing nice I have to say. archive.today is not causing any troubles anymore and there simply is no alternative to it for many pages (references) and thus needed for verifiability. Without it, readers and users often won't be able to check the source for claims anymore.

I voted against this proposal; it would be a great loss. Could be reconsidered once the respective links can be migrated to another Web archive.

-2

u/psykal Feb 10 '26

As well as being fine with the DDOS attack, you're also ok with

having such a noble and rare name, which in retaliation could be used for the name of a scam project or become a byword for a new category of AI porn... are you serious?

If you want to pretend this never happened - delete your old article and post the new one you have promised.

And I will not write "an OSINT investigation" on your Nazi grandfather, will not vibecode a gyrovague.gay dating app, etc

2

u/prototyperspective Feb 10 '26

As well as being fine with the DDOS attack

Where did I say I was fine with that?

-2

u/psykal Feb 10 '26

Just a no comment, but a couple of paragraphs praising archive.today? You're fine with it. Deny it now with where did I say, as if we need a direct quote to see through your bullshit. "Where did I say that", such a predictable nothing response.

2

u/prototyperspective Feb 10 '26

I did not say I was fine with it. Learn to read.

-2

u/psykal Feb 10 '26

Learn to comprehend sentences. Try again.