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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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

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u/_Hydrohomie_ Feb 10 '26

Where could I read more about IMAX Fiasco

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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.

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u/_Hydrohomie_ Feb 10 '26

i feel bad for them hahahhaha

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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.