Wikipedia editors are currently engaged in a discussion about possibly blacklisting Archive.today after the site was implicated in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targeting a blogger who exposed details about the site's anonymous maintainer in 2023.
On a request for comment page, the editors have been presented with three possible actions. The first option proposes the complete removal or concealment of all Archive.today links and adding the site to Wikipedia's spam blacklist. The second option suggests deprecating Archive.today, which would discourage future linking while allowing existing archived links to remain. The third option advocates for no action, keeping the current usage unchanged.
The impact of implementing Option A could be significant, as Archive.today is embedded in more than 695,000 links across approximately 400,000 Wikipedia pages. Archive.today, also known as Archive.is, captures snapshots of webpages and is often utilized to circumvent paywalls present on news websites.
The request for comment explained, "Archive.today uses sophisticated scraping techniques and is generally viewed as more reliable compared to the Internet Archive. Due to prior concerns over botnets, linkspamming, and operational issues, the community initially blacklisted it in 2013, though the site was subsequently removed from the blacklist in 2016."
Discussions amongst the editors initiated on February 7, revealing diverse opinions. One editor advocating for blacklisting emphasized, "The requirement for verifiable citations on Wikipedia should not overshadow the security of its users. While maintaining reader trust necessitates verifiable citations, it is equally essential that the resources they access are safe."
Conversely, supporters of Option C underscore the archive's irreplaceable value. One editor noted, "Archive.today hosts a wealth of archived content unavailable elsewhere, including on the Wayback Machine. As the second largest archive resource for Wikimedia sites, banning or blocking it would disrupt thousands of editors and readers daily, resulting in many unresolved {{dead link}} tags."