Difference between revisions of "Alive... OR ARE THEY"

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=== Owned by Yahoo! Imminent Demise! ===
=== Owned by [[Yahoo!]] Imminent Demise! ===


* '''[[Flickr]]''' contains billions of files, hundreds millions of which are under a Creative Commons license or stored there by many museums and other cultural institutions. The site was tumblr-ised in 2013 and has been poorly functional ever since; pro users were removed, so it doesn't yet have a business model. Additionally, it's owned by Yahoo!, need to say more?!
* '''Yahoo and AOL''' properties are being sold by Verizon to hedge fund Apollo in 2021. The news comes immediately after the closure of [[Yahoo! Answers]] and will presumably be swiftly followed by radical disruption for the sake of short-term cash milking.<ref>{{url|https://www.reuters.com/technology/apollo-acquire-verizons-media-assets-5-bln-2021-05-03/}}</ref>
* <del>'''[[Flickr]]''' contains billions of files, hundreds millions of which are under a Creative Commons license or stored there by many museums and other cultural institutions. The site was tumblr-ised in 2013 and has been poorly functional ever since; pro users were removed, so it doesn't yet have a business model. Additionally, it's owned by [[Yahoo!]], need to say more?!</del>
** Flickr was sold to SmugMug in 2018, purged the biggest non-paying and non-freely licensed accounts and switched to a more predictable subscription-based model.


=== Watchlist ===
=== Watchlist ===
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* '''[[Dayviews]]''' ({{url|1=http://dayviews.com/}}), the Swedish photo diary community contains quite a bit of 00s Swedish "youth culture", but is at risk of being shutdown when you least suspect it due to its sinking user rate.
* '''[[Dayviews]]''' ({{url|1=http://dayviews.com/}}), the Swedish photo diary community contains quite a bit of 00s Swedish "youth culture", but is at risk of being shutdown when you least suspect it due to its sinking user rate.
* '''[[Delicious]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.delicious.com/}}) loves to change their API, which has a side effect of making it difficult to back up.
* '''[[Delicious]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.delicious.com/}}) loves to change their API, which has a side effect of making it difficult to back up.
* '''[[Elfwood]]''' has been home to tons of fantasy and sci-fi art and fiction since the late 90's, though since June 2016, plans for a "new Elfwood" have been put on hold, and as of Arpil 2017, the website is in an odd state where pages will return a status code of 504, while images will load just fine. It was last seen functioning normally in early December 2016.
* '''[[Facebook]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.facebook.com/}}) seems stable at the moment.
* '''[[Facebook]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.facebook.com/}}) seems stable at the moment.
* '''[[FanFiction]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.fanfiction.net/}}) represents many thousands of user-generated stories, essays and huge amounts of work.
* '''[[FanFiction]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.fanfiction.net/}}) represents many thousands of user-generated stories, essays and huge amounts of work.
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*'''[[Mod DB]]''' ({{url|1=http://moddb.com/}}) is the largest website dedicated to user generated game content, including mods (12,000) and addons (14,000) with a combined size of 4,5 TB of user-generated downloadable content.
*'''[[Mod DB]]''' ({{url|1=http://moddb.com/}}) is the largest website dedicated to user generated game content, including mods (12,000) and addons (14,000) with a combined size of 4,5 TB of user-generated downloadable content.
*'''[[Moegirlpedia]]''' ({{url|https://zh.moegirl.org}}) is the biggest Chinese-language encyclopedia for popular culture.
*'''[[Moegirlpedia]]''' ({{url|https://zh.moegirl.org}}) is the biggest Chinese-language encyclopedia for popular culture.
*'''[[MUGEN Archive]]''' (({{url|1=http://www.mugenarchive.com/}}) Holds 1000's of user created addon content for the custom fighting game MUGEN. Much of the stuff uploaded here was thought lost forever. However, thanks to all the copyright infringing content and uploading a lot of content without the creators permission, the future of the site is questionable.
*'''[[MUGEN Archive]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.mugenarchive.com/}}) Holds 1000's of user created addon content for the custom fighting game MUGEN. Much of the stuff uploaded here was thought lost forever. However, thanks to all the copyright infringing content and uploading a lot of content without the creators permission, the future of the site is questionable.
*'''[[nyaa]]''' ({{url|https://nyaa.si/}}) - Biggest torrent site of Japanese popular culture.
* '''[[Pastebin]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.pastebin.com/}}) is still getting filled with text.
* '''[[Pastebin]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.pastebin.com/}}) is still getting filled with text.
* '''[[Pixiv]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.pixiv.net/}}) and '''[[deviantArt]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.deviantart.com/}}) are the largest Japanese and American (respectively) fanart (and valuable art in general) collections on the internet. Most of works are possibly included in [https://saucenao.com/status.html many boorus]
* '''[[Pixiv]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.pixiv.net/}}) and '''[[deviantArt]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.deviantart.com/}}) are the largest Japanese and American (respectively) fanart (and valuable art in general) collections on the internet. Most of works are possibly included in [https://saucenao.com/status.html many boorus]. Someone also mentioned [http://www.minitokyo.net/ Minitokyo] around here somewhere. [[Internet Archive|IA]] has a 2008 [https://archive.org/details/mt-walls-2008-01-01 wallpaper dump] from there.
* '''[[Pouet]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.pouet.net/}}) is an important site of the demoscene. It indexes and ranks demoscene productions ('prods') and also includes a free-for-all BBS-style forum.
* '''[[Pouet]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.pouet.net/}}) is an important site of the demoscene. It indexes and ranks demoscene productions ('prods') and also includes a free-for-all BBS-style forum. [https://demozoo.org/ Demozoo] is a site in the same vein with a slightly different focus. They both use the same ISP iirc so if that goes down a lot of user created content is lost.
* '''[[Reddit]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.reddit.com/}}) is a content aggregator where [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Issues_relating_to_former_Digg_website many Digg users migrated in 2010]. Attracted controversy in July 2015, with accusations of [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/amageddon censorship] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning shadowbanning]. Stable for now, but team is small.
* '''[[Reddit]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.reddit.com/}}) is a content aggregator where [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Issues_relating_to_former_Digg_website many Digg users migrated in 2010]. Attracted controversy in July 2015, with accusations of [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/amageddon censorship] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning shadowbanning]. Stable for now, but team is small.
* '''[[SourceForge]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.sourceforge.net/}}) is a critical repository of open source code, information, and webpages. It is mirrored and maintained, but there are sure to be parts that are neither.
* '''[[SourceForge]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.sourceforge.net/}}) is a critical repository of open source code, information, and webpages. It is mirrored and maintained, but there are sure to be parts that are neither.
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* '''[[TVTropes]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage}}) is a popular wiki dedicated to finding recurring patterns in fiction, and discussing fiction in general. No word on whether there are backups. The administrators have a tendency to delete things indiscriminately, usually to save on disk space: article edit histories are frequently purged, and old forum threads have been known to get deleted mercilessly. A [http://archive.org/details/archiveteam-tvtropes-2012-09 backup] and [https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Main_Page an alternate website] with imported content from July 2012 are available.  
* '''[[TVTropes]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage}}) is a popular wiki dedicated to finding recurring patterns in fiction, and discussing fiction in general. No word on whether there are backups. The administrators have a tendency to delete things indiscriminately, usually to save on disk space: article edit histories are frequently purged, and old forum threads have been known to get deleted mercilessly. A [http://archive.org/details/archiveteam-tvtropes-2012-09 backup] and [https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Main_Page an alternate website] with imported content from July 2012 are available.  
* '''[[Twitter]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.twitter.com/}}) is tweaking away, with a dire financial situation and [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/06/twitter-in-meltdown-as-entire-userbase-revolts/ controversial decisions].
* '''[[Twitter]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.twitter.com/}}) is tweaking away, with a dire financial situation and [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/06/twitter-in-meltdown-as-entire-userbase-revolts/ controversial decisions].
* '''[[Voat]]''' ({{url|1=https://voat.co/}}) is a content aggegator that gained a niche fanbase in June 2015 after a controversy on [[Reddit]]. A "Days Remaining" countdown appeared on the front page in February 2016 and [https://voat.co/v/whatever/comments/943274 has been confirmed] to be the number of startup credit days remaining, which were depleted in June 15, 2016. Voat relies on donations to run.
* '''[[Urban Dictionary]]''' ({{URL|https://www.urbandictionary.com/}}) is "a crowdsourced online dictionary for slang words and phrases"<ref>{{URL|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urban_Dictionary&oldid=926230888|Wikipedia}}</ref>. It's financed by ads and a web store, and there are no signs of serious trouble as of late 2019.
* '''[[WebCite]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.webcitation.org/}}) itself seems to be having trouble with funding, and is facing "possible discontinuation." As this site serves as a stable reference for fleeting Web references, it would be pretty disastrous if it went away.
* '''[[WebCite]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.webcitation.org/}}) itself seems to be having trouble with funding, and is facing "possible discontinuation." As this site serves as a stable reference for fleeting Web references, it would be pretty disastrous if it went away.
* '''[[whitehouse.gov]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.whitehouse.gov/}}) is up and running for #44, <s>but we've lost all info for #43. (See also: [http://www.kottke.org/09/01/old-whitehousegov-down-the-memory-hole kottke] and [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whitehousegov_president_web_presence.php Read Write Web].)</s> and #43 is available at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ thanks to the [http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/ephemera_vs_the_law/ Presidential Records Act]. We also want to watch out for site changes / disappeared pages that were embarrassing or whatnot.
* '''[[whitehouse.gov]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.whitehouse.gov/}}) is overhauled every time a new US president assumes office and changes continuously during the term. Old versions are preserved thanks to the [http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/ephemera_vs_the_law/ Presidential Records Act] (e.g. [http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ George W. Bush's]), but we also want to watch out for site changes / disappeared pages that were embarrassing or whatnot.
* '''[[Wikia]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.wikia.com/}}), the for-pay arm of Wikipedia (just kidding, it's a different company, but shares a lot of people) is a repository of directed, unsubject-to-wikipolitics wikis, many of them intense and completist. It'd be bad for them to go away.
* '''[[Wikia]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.wikia.com/}}), the for-pay arm of Wikipedia (just kidding, it's a different company, but shares a lot of people) is a repository of directed, unsubject-to-wikipolitics wikis, many of them intense and completist. It'd be bad for them to go away.
* '''[[WikiLeaks]]''' ({{url|1=http://wikileaks.org/}}) contains several thousand leaked documents from sources such as the Iraq War and the cables famously known under the label 'Cablegate'. Due to the content on the website, and that PayPal and Amazon (very) quickly dropped their hosting for them during Cablegate's opening days, it should be considered a potential target for any number of government committees for quick shutdown. They have an uncertain financial situation, and the site was inaccessible for some time in 2010.
* '''[[WikiLeaks]]''' ({{url|1=http://wikileaks.org/}}) contains several thousand leaked documents from sources such as the Iraq War and the cables famously known under the label 'Cablegate'. Due to the content on the website, and that PayPal and Amazon (very) quickly dropped their hosting for them during Cablegate's opening days, it should be considered a potential target for any number of government committees for a quick shutdown. They have an uncertain financial situation, and the site was inaccessible for some time in 2010.
* '''[[Wikipedia]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.wikipedia.org/}}) will surely be here forever and ever! Fortunately, we don't have to take their word for it as they offer dumps of the data minus the photos. However no-one has verified that Wikipedia can actually be restored from these dumps. If disaster strikes then we could discover a serious problem.
* '''[[Wikipedia]]''' ({{url|1=http://www.wikipedia.org/}}) will surely be here forever and ever! Fortunately, we don't have to take their word for it as they offer dumps of the data minus the photos. However, no-one has verified that Wikipedia can actually be restored from these dumps. If disaster strikes then we could discover a serious problem.
* '''[[Writing]]''' ({{url|1=http://Writing.com/}}) A website for writing that was big in the 2000's. More and more restricted to guests and free users, as they are in need of money to keep the site running. Less and less popular for that reason


== Endangered ==
== Endangered ==
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* [[YTMND]] - supposed to be "closing down soon" in [https://gizmodo.com/who-killed-ytmnd-1785765611 2016], but still up 2 years later.
* [[YTMND]] - supposed to be "closing down soon" in [https://gizmodo.com/who-killed-ytmnd-1785765611 2016], but still up 2 years later.
* [[Giphy]]: Bought by Facebook, to be "integrated" (assimilated) into Instagram https://news.knowyourmeme.com/news/facebook-to-buy-giphy
*[[CodePlex]]: Read-only archive shutdown has been announced to happen in July.


== See Also ==
== See Also ==

Revision as of 14:36, 3 May 2021

Like many sites before them, these places indicate a sunny outlook, a clean bill of health and a total sense of "all systems go". But as we've found out from those many sites before them, fortunes can change overnight.

Archive Team considers these sites specifically of interest because they solicit so much content, contain so many works and projects by a wide group of people, or have the internet particularly dependent on them. Consider this a fire drill.. know what you can do to get your data off these sites and back them off for later.

Still Alive

Owned by Yahoo! Imminent Demise!

  • Yahoo and AOL properties are being sold by Verizon to hedge fund Apollo in 2021. The news comes immediately after the closure of Yahoo! Answers and will presumably be swiftly followed by radical disruption for the sake of short-term cash milking.[1]
  • Flickr contains billions of files, hundreds millions of which are under a Creative Commons license or stored there by many museums and other cultural institutions. The site was tumblr-ised in 2013 and has been poorly functional ever since; pro users were removed, so it doesn't yet have a business model. Additionally, it's owned by Yahoo!, need to say more?!
    • Flickr was sold to SmugMug in 2018, purged the biggest non-paying and non-freely licensed accounts and switched to a more predictable subscription-based model.

Watchlist

Endangered

Did someone leave the oven on?

  • Ning in 2010 has laid off 40% of staff and seems to be running out of money [1]. There is certainly some networks worth archiving among the 2 million networks[2] they host. Grouply[3] and Posterous[4] say they are going to offer migration tools.
  • As of 2014, ScraperWiki Classic is now read-only. But don’t worry! You can transfer this scraper to Morph.io if you want to continue editing it.
  • debates.oireachtas.ie on September 18th, 2012 the Houses of Oireachtas website announced that it would no longer be updating its XML data for Irish parliamentary debates (1919-2012). Access to pre-existing data is still available, but is likely to disappear, if the current trend continues. It would be useful to at least capture the XML data that is there, while it is still available. Here's a WARC archive of the XML only.
  • ownlog.com - once one of the most popular and oldest blog platform in Poland seems to be dying slowly - no development and actualizations except most critical maintenance.
  • Groklaw will no longer be posting new articles, "due to government monitoring of the internet, particularly e-mail." Whether or not its archives will remain online is unclear, although it does seem rather unlikely it will 100% disappear. OTOH, better safe than sorry.
  • Seene (https://seene.co/u/docpop/[IAWcite.todayMemWeb]) "lets you capture and share a new kind of 3D photo that brings together image, depth and movement to create a richer, more interactive experience, all on your iPhone." Unique content, but recently acquired by SnapChat - no new product updates since 2015. Likely to shut soon, unique and cool content.
  • Strawpoll.me
  • The Centralstation Community has closed. The site is a UK-based social network for artists and creatives that provides hosting for content and portfolio. Users are being advised to back up their work as the new version of their platform will rely on existing media hosting sites like Flickr, Vimeo, and Soundcloud.
  • Most of the paid staff at The Escapist has been "relieved of their duties" as of October 20, 2017, and the future and longevity of the site is uncertain; it's currently run mostly through volunteer efforts.
  • Yelp, Inc. lost 30% of its advertisers and people don't seem too happy about it.

Alarm

I smell smoke.

  • CtoSims Has been infected with a Javascript that redirects to different pages, and the owner seems to have not been active for a long time. The entire site now redirects to a placeholder page that says "Coming Soon!". As of December 2016, All Downloads have been taken down as well.
  • YTMND - supposed to be "closing down soon" in 2016, but still up 2 years later.
  • CodePlex: Read-only archive shutdown has been announced to happen in July.

See Also

References