The English-language edition of Wikipedia is blacklisting Archive.today after the controversial archive site was used to direct a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blog.
In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.
Has the accuracy of the snapshots actually changed based on this edit? After all, if it’s factual information being presented…
I do agree that it raises the issue of what other modifications there may be, and it IS childish, but so is going after a person who provides a good service and wants to remain anonymous while doing so.
All I’m saying is that while I do not agree with the actions, I also am not saying I don’t understand the reasoning behind.
Yes! Quite literally, yes. They’re supposed to be an archive of what is on other sites. It doesn’t matter if the original site was, right, wrong, complete, incomplete, accurate, inaccurate, factual, unfactual, etc. If they change things, they’re editorializing and are no longer an archive, they’re new content - which is not the purpose people use them for.
That’s literally the point. It doesn’t matter how much you “understand the reasoning” (though you also think it’s childish and don’t agree with the actions). You can use it if you want to, no one is stopping you. The point is Wikipedia can’t trust it as a source of archived data and has every right to ban it.