Wayback Machine

[ithildin]

This came up during a conversation I had with strangevisitor7 on websites that become defunct, taking your fave fic with it. And if your fandom doesn't have a central archive, you're pretty much out of luck. I have come across so many links to Mag Seven fic that are dead -- not resting, not pining, but dead [g] But all is not lost! There's this wonderful device, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. You plug in the original dead URL, and it brings up cached versions of the page; because nothing is ever truly gone on the internet. Casey hadn't known about it, so it occurred to me that others might not either. So this is my PSA for the week :)

Later: I was only trying to share what might be a useful resource for people. I get it doesn't work for everything, but what does? If you can find a few lost fics, then cool, if not, oh well. It's not the end of the world, just annoying.

Comments

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I found many, many wonderful fics that way, but... what if you don't have the original url, just the title of the story, and nobody on fic find comms knows where it might have gone or has a copy? What then?

[fractured-sun.livejournal.com]

I've tried using this a couple of times, I am half convinced I'm somehow doing it wrong because I never actually seem to get the fic out of it. (I'm not sure though how one could do this wrong the instructions seem simple enough).

[mischief5.livejournal.com]

I've used it a number of time to retrieve lost fic. Very cool!

[mprice.livejournal.com]

It doesn't work for everything, especially websites that require sign-in. So far, I have yet to find a single webpage that I needed.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I must just be lucky. I've gotten everything I've tried for. Anyway, I know it doesn't work for everything, but it's better than nothing and I thought it was worth sharing.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

It is!

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

That's too bad. It's found me lots of fic I woulnd't get to read otherwise.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

No idea. Guess you're just out of luck unless someone has the original bookmarked and can share the link with you.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Yeah... the Wayback Machine isn't the panacea it's often described as being.

If you don't have the exact URL, good luck on finding the page you're looking for. If the URL leads to a link on the archived page...good luck with that.

Plus, at least one site I tried to summon up via Wayback Machine apparently had the "no spiders" rule--so the Wayback Machine didn't archive any of the pages. And now that the original site is gone, they're GONE.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I didn't say it was a panacea. I was only trying to share a resource that people might not know about. I have found it useful, that's all I was trying to say.

[mischief5.livejournal.com]

It can be very useful! One thing I do like about it is the closure it can give you. If it's not on Wayback, it really is gone and you can quit driving yourself nuts trying to find something. But when you do find a long lost treasure, it's thrilling!!

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

I know. :( It's terrible, you know, that someone would just let their page expire without giving people a chance to download a story, or move it to a free server or something where it would stay accessible.

I had such trouble finding all the stories of the original 7 as brothers AU. If it weren't for people who had bits and pieces saved, I never would have read it. I know slashers are looking for the original Two Bloods fics, which were pulled by the author who wants to expand them into original publishable stories.

Even though it's not a cure-all (and it never pretended to be) it's incredibly useful; I really love that someone took all that trouble to make things we thought were long gone available to us. We would have been handicapped without the Wayback when it comes to some old old fics.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I just thought it was something people might like to know about. Foolish person that I am, I know :)

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I wonder if people just don't think anyone would care enough about their fic to miss it? I know some people pull it for personal reasons, but usually, they just drift away from the fandom and the website goes black.

Back in the day, when archives were few and far between, I used to save fic I liked to my harddrive, taking the email posts and pasting them into one doc. Then I got lazy [g] And Highlander had an awesome archive (Seventh Dimension) where most everything seemed to end up, so I got spoiled. I am so glad it exists because a lot of that fic is gone from the original websites. I still have a 13 year old file full of saved fic.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to say that you did. It's just that the Wayback Machine sounds a lot better in theory than it has turned out to be in my experience. It _has_ coughed up some useful links for me on occasion, but just as often it fails.

[bookaddict43.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this! I've read about it here and there, but not used it.

Nothing bugs me more than broken links *grins*. This is one reason I'll always keep my LJ going.

[grachonok.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks! I'll definately try it soon:).

When I used dial-up Internet, I saved everything I liked on hard-drive, but good net with unlimited traffic got me spoiled... And I think I should come back to saving favorites, just to be able to reread them when Internet is out:). (Like yesterday, when huge night thunderstorm knocked everything out and it was very dull:)).

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm the same way. I have a folder for Mag7, and subfolders for pictures and fic, and within the fic folder I have subfolders for authors, and if they have series and AUs I have subfolders for those too. Can you tell I'm obsessed? LOL.

All joking aside, it's from the time when I had no internet access at home and I had to go to (OMG expensive!) net cafes do download my fix fics to read at home; the habit stuck. I'm glad it did, since there are some fics that aren't online anymore.

[strangevisitor7.livejournal.com]

I am so glad you told me about it - I thought that web site was gone forever. *hugs*

Yay-Ness!

[m7storyteller.livejournal.com]

How did I not know about this sooner? It would have made my life so much easier. Honestly, I was looking for a fic last month, and I found the title but the website wasn't the website anymore, so I saw this entry on the Clarion News flist, and I tried it and I got it...I'm so happy. Hee!

Thank you!

Re: Yay-Ness!

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

I see from your LJ that you're a Mark/Lexie fan too, and FNL! Very cool :)

This is the only Stitch icon I have, but he wanted to meet yours, so.... LOL

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Glad the topic came up!

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely am not the same internet user I was 12 years ago :)

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I used to archive my fic in several different places besides my own archive but got lazy about that too :)

[tpena19.livejournal.com]

OMG! I do the same thing with my files and fic.

I never went to internet cafes, but my old internet was hit and miss so I'd dl a lot to save just in case.

[tpena19.livejournal.com]

Wayback has been veruy helpful for me before, but like it's been mentioned if you don't know the url, uh-oh. That's where I think groups and communities are awesome helps.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I wasn't even talking about things you don't have URLs for. That's a whole other subject.

[tpena19.livejournal.com]

You are right, you did mention that you had to have the url for wayback, but so many people already mentioned no urls, so I simply had to add my thoughts on it too ;)

BTW thanks for posting the url for wayback, I'd lost mine, lol, so I just added it to my faves list again.

[shadadukal]

I haven't had any luck with it so far.

But the fics I was looking for were pulled from the Internet because the author stopped writing fanfiction. I think she may have moved on to become a professional writer so maybe she had to, but I lost a lot of my favourite fics because of that.

I rarely save fics in word files, mostly because it'd turn out to be quite time-consuming (and also take a lof ot space after a while).