Difference between revisions of "Frequently Asked Questions"

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Join us on [[IRC|IRC! (All channels and info listed here.)]] For general inquiries, visit [irc://irc.efnet.org/archiveteam #archiveteam] on EFNet.
Join us on [[IRC|IRC! (All channels and info listed here.)]] For general inquiries, visit [irc://irc.efnet.org/archiveteam #archiveteam] on EFNet.


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Revision as of 01:32, 20 October 2013

How can I help?

See Who We Are, Deathwatch, and Category:Projects_status. These pages describe our projects and the things you can do to help.

Is the Archive Team affiliated with the Internet Archive (archive.org)?

Not directly. A few members are affiliated, but majority of Archive Team members are volunteers who help while not busy at work or school.

How should I go about backing things up?

What would you like to back up? If you want to mirror/backup a website, the de facto tool is Wget (but there's lots more, see Software!). WARC files are highly recommended as they can be ingested by the Wayback Machine.

If you want to back up your personal files, "List of backup software" at Wikipedia is an extensive list of backup software. See Backup Tips as well!

What are these WARC files in the Internet Archive? How do I extract files from a WARC file?

WARC files are de facto medium of digital preservation of the web. These WARC files are ingested by the Wayback Machine.

There is a growing number of tools that can manipulate WARC files in The WARC Ecosystem.

Where do all the saved files go?

Files are ultimately uploaded to Internet Archive on the Archive Team collection.

I think there is a web site that's going to shut down / sun set / end its incredible journey. Can you save it?

Yes, do tell us a soon as possible! Don't just Tweet about it; do something. Talk to us on IRC to let us know. There is also a /r/shutdown sub-Reddit.

I lost my stuff from Geocities/Tabblo/Posterous/some web host! Where can I get it back?

Try searching the wiki for a page about the specific website to find out more about what happened. Typically, there are several ways of recovering files from the Internet Archive:

  • A specially crafted username lookup page created by Archive Team
    • Allows you to search by your username and will present the relevant materials. Only a small set of projects have this feature.
  • The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine
    • This method is the easiest for most users but some web pages take months to show up in the Wayback Machine.
  • Individual WARC Files uploaded to the Internet Archive
    • This method is the most accurate but requires power user skills with working with WARC files. As well, WARC files produced by the Internet Archive are not publicly available (but the ones by Archive Team are always available).

Can someone remove or fix something on the Internet Archive (archive.org)?

Possibly. Keep in mind that majority of Archive Team are volunteers who are not affiliated with the Internet Archive and requests should go to staff instead. If strenuous circumstances arise, please see the question about contacting Archive Team below.

Is there a backup of the data on the archiveteam.org website? If so where can I download it?

Two sets of backups of this wiki are available. There are backups done by the hosting provider (several, going back days and weeks as well as hours), which use the storage capability of the shared hosting to keep them automatically (no tape or disk backups being done as most people would think of them). There are similarly copies of the database kept going back months.

Additionally, an XML dump of the Mediawiki database (which can be imported into any MediaWiki software) is accessible at http://www.archiveteam.org/dumps. New backups are currently pushed out once a week (and will be increased if changes on the site require it). All images are also wrapped into a images.tar.gz file, although our entire images directory is available at http://www.archiveteam.org/images.

Is there a mirror of the archiveteam.org website?

There are no mirrors we know of, although we encourage our more paranoid or protective readers to maintain one based on the above dumps.

There is a backup from August 03, 2011 available. The main things that are not included are: Site history, Edit & source of the pages, Special pages and other minor links. (See "Not Crawled.txt") Click here to download.

Does Archive Team have any social media accounts?

Follow us on Twitter: @archiveteam, @at_warrior and like us on Facebook. (These accounts are run by selected volunteers).

If you don't like social media, you can also subscribe to email alerts from Google ArchiveTeam group.

I went through the wiki and I still have a question! How do I contact the Archive Team?

Join us on IRC! (All channels and info listed here.) For general inquiries, visit #archiveteam on EFNet.