Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Using Archive.is

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was Keep as WP:NOTHOWTO is obviously not applicable to the Project namespace. The exact location of this page (Help or Wikipedia namespace) is better discussed separately. I also do see only a weak support for the userfication. Ruslik_ Zero 19:14, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Using Archive.is


Per WP:NOTHOWTO PantherLeapord&#124;My talk page&#124;My CSD log 21:38, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 *  Delete Comment: WP:NOTHOWTO can't be cited here because it refers to 'how-to' articles for external content. But Wikipedia has other valid pages like Using the Wayback Machine and Using WebCite for internal use in the Wikipedia namespace. Note how the Archive.is manual uses almost literally the same style. Anyhow, I am however reluctant to keep this page because of the ongoing Archive.is RFC where the integrity of Archive.is has been questioned. The creation of this manual looks more like a promotional effort along with anonymous edits like these . De728631 (talk) 21:58, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep Either this will be useful, if it turns out that the site is reliable, or the page can be changed to an explanation why not to use this archive. NOTHOWTO is not relevant as this is not an article, and Wikipedia namespace can certainly tell you how to do things for the benefit of Wikipedia. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:05, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You've got a point there. But I still think the page should be out of sight as long as the case is still disputed. That's why I like NE Ent's idea of userfying it pending the outcome of the RFC. When the RFC is over we can then still decide how to use the manual page. De728631 (talk) 22:18, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Move to the Help namespace, along with other "using ___" pages, since projectspace isn't really meant for assistance of this kind. Having such pages is quite helpful, and as noted above, NOTHOWTO is one of the many WP:NOT pieces that are only relevant in mainspace.  Nyttend (talk) 22:59, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep, I see no valid reason why this should be deleted (Nor CSD'd) as IMO it's a helpful tool & to a certain extent encyclopedic, Although admittingly WP isn't a manual but see no harm in keeping it. — Davey  2010  Talk  23:29, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Userfy (keep for now, delete if not endorsed later). This page is premature to be a guideline or recommendation page and seems to be created by the service's proponents under unclear motivation. There is no consensus to use this archival service for now, and the current RfC does not show large-scale support. There are other small archival services out there and we do not make pages for each one. However, it is a helpful guide to whoever would want to use it, so we can keep it until the conclusion of the RfC. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:38, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Change to keep as "userfy" until RfC resolved. No need for this to be in WP: or Help: space. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * There's no explicit consensus not to use Archive.is. It has been used for 9 months without controversy, now there's controversy, but the prior 9 months were consensed by local discussion and ongoing use by long term good faith editors such as myself and many others (I guess if you've never panicked when a web-only RS link goes dead, you'll never understand me). Also, we do have "using" pages for Wayback Machine and WebCite - and remember, WebCite was tiny once. I promoted it when it showed up, shaky as it was. Back before there was a mainspace article for WebCite, there was a Using paragraph which got moved to a Using page, if I recall correctly. --Lexein (talk) 23:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I've run a bot to repair dead links myself so I understand perfectly, I just don't agree. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Userfy and remove any shortcuts/weblinks/redirects/conferences of consensus. en.WP is still deciding if it wants to accept/trust this archiving service after it was discovered that the service (and agents of the service) were deliberately inserting themselves into Wikipedia to gain credibility.  Further, when cought, the agent and their unapproved bot did not work with the community, but instead engaged in activities which suggest a distributed botnet. Coupled with the spontaneous materialization of several advocates leads me to think we're being the target of a coordinated campaign to override the consensus of wikipedia editors.  All actions to improve the reputation of Archive.is should be met with guarded hostility until such time that the leadership of Archive.is willing to come forth, be honest with the wikipedia community, and respect the wishes of the community. Hasteur (talk) 12:57, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Please stop presenting fabrications as opinion or fact: things like "it was discovered that the service (and agents of the service) were deliberately inserting themselves into Wikipedia to gain credibility" never happened. Nobody "discovered" any such thing. If you didn't make it up, link the diffs, please. One IP troll, and one IP arguer-in-good-faith do not a "consensus-overriding" campaign make. I reject your "guarded hostility" anti-Five Pillars stance. But I agree that Rotlink needs to come the hell forward. --Lexein (talk) 08:33, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * as the #1 editor advocate for Archive.is (and now the #3 liability for your peculiar and non-policy based rationalles) I invite you to shut your mouth lest you cause any more harm to the purpose you appear to be advocating. Fact 1: RotlinkBot operated creating links to archiving services and Archive.is without a Bot Authorization.  Fact 2: After the bot was cought and blocked, the operator, Rotlink, came forth and made a partial attempt at getting approved. Fact 3: Rotlink withdrew the bot request and so the bot remained blocked. Fact 4: A geographically disparate set of IPs started adding links to articles that they had never edited before and never edited since (or edited many articles at all) in the same manner that RotlinkBot was. Fact 5: Some of the IPs in Fact 4 have been traced back to sites associated with hosting content of questionable/illegal value.  Fact 6: After the first set of reversals, a second set of IPs came in and did and added more archive links with the same behavorial signature as Rotlink bot and those listed in Fact 4.
 * Now I may take a very dismal view of editors that refuse to follow procedure, but we can all agree that right now having a howto in any space that confers legitimacy to Archive.is (including getting the howto into Help space as you propose below) simply serves to bolster the credibility of Archive.is when it appears that Archive.is (and it's agents) have deliberately used wikipedia for their own gains. Hasteur (talk) 13:04, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Troll. You want to be a bully. You want to feel free to tell me to "shut my mouth". Ok, no.
 * Try targeting the correct editor in your diatribes and edit summaries: "Rub Lexin's nose in the facts that they don't want to see." What did User:Lexin do to deserve such treatment? If you can't read or remember my name correctly, how do I know you've read anything I've written correctly?  Are you lying now, or were you lying then? Goes to character, and you're not showing much: don't pretend it was a typo, you did it while my name was 1/4" away from where you were typing, and in the edit summary. Pathetic.
 * "#1 editor advocate" for Archive.is? Nope. I don't approve of off-policy behavior but I do approve of verifiability, and do steadfastly oppose the destruction of work product which in and of itself complies with policy and the Five Pillars. So if that makes me a supporter of Archive.is, that makes me a supporter of Archive.org and WebCite, too. Delete links to any of them, and I'll oppose it, and revert it. Try tarring me with something else. Oh, wait, you did: "#3 liability for your peculiar and non-policy based rationalles" That's just gibberish. I'll take credit for, in these discussions, being the strongest advocate for Wikipedia and the Five Pillars (which trump policy), and verifiability, and against the unnecessary destruction of work against those ends of anyone. That you so blatantly disrespect me and my position speaks rather poorly of you.
 * The misbehavior of someone adding archive.is and archive.org links via IPs to evade blocks is unacceptable, I've already stated that, multiple times; you've deliberately not noticed that. You're quite willing to bullet-point "facts" ad nauseum, just like User:Kww, without being able to sensibly assemble any meaning from them. Did you notice that you have never established causality? Fact #1: No, you didn't. I can freely discard all of your circumstantial evidence until you show causality. Fact #2: The higher purpose of this encyclopedia, and the Five Pillars, trumps your petty vindictiveness. Meaning: verifiability is more important than police actions. Fact #3: The validity of archiving deadlinked RS is not to be questioned, regardless of your rather aggro attitude.  Why don't you just start attacking the Five Pillars directly? Right on Jimbo's Talk page?
 * "but we can all agree"? Sorry, nobody but you and Kww, really. Not "we". Just "you", lonely boys. As long as archive.is links exist in refs here, by apparent consensus, knowledge about creating them should remain, in the form of this howto. "confers legitimacy"? No, because there's no need! Fact #3 The links were already legitimate before any of this "bot" allegation bullshit started. Fact #4 Archive.is was already legitimate, having done more work than you've ever done to preserve verifiability. And, it was already starting to get positive mentions and reviews (more than you), though I expect you will not admit to that.  IMHO, the work product is valid, regardless of how it got here. Deal with your blocks & whatever, I don't care, I consider them entirely separate from the Archive.is archived pages, and the utility of the links to it. I've answered you, and I'm right. If you refuse to understand, that's on you.
 * --Lexein (talk) 23:11, 3 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Premature. Let's wait for the outcome of the Archive.is RFC. Someone not using his real name (talk) 05:11, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete. Created by a WP:SPA, part of the same IP sock farm that has been spamming links to archive.is, no doubt. Someone not using his real name (talk) 03:02, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep or move to Help. As long as even one Archive.is link remains on Wikipedia, this howto page belongs either here or in Help. This unseemly use of words like "botnet" "spambot", and "illegal" (by User:Kww) and "sock" and "SPA" by (User:Someone not using his real name), without really solid substantiating evidence is in astonishingly bad faith, and it disgusts me. Further, they have nothing to do with the validity of the archive.is contents, or correct links from here to there. I don't want bots running amok, but I also don't want editors falsely or flimsily accused, and I do want archive.is's links to remain on Wikipedia, especially where they support dead RS not archived anywhere else. I care about verifiability that much. So, I stand by my first point. --Lexein (talk) 08:33, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - It was created as part of a (still ongoing) campaign by the owner/operator of the startup to use Wikipedia to promote itself. Archive.is is new, small (1 or perhaps 2 people), unproven, and may end up with ads that may make it unviable for Wikipedia use (the site FAQ even makes reference to that, promising only to exclude ads until 2015?). We should only keep documentation in project space that encourages use of services that are well established and proven (especially for services like web archival, which editors are often looking for and can quickly come into widespread use here -- we could face a massive cleanup/conversion effort in the future, should this service go under or become unviable in some other way), rather than keeping instructions for just any startups here -- especially ones that their entrepreneurs likely posted themselves, which obviously makes it all the more disconcerting. equazcion � | 03:41, 9 Oct 2013 (UTC)
 * Help pages about in-use resources should remain until all use of that resource stops. Ads are not an issue. Even User:Kww the admin, who advocated reverts of bot(?)-added archive.is links, and who started WP:Archive.is RFC doesn't think ads are an issue. And we're keeping the many thousands of good faith (non-bot) archiveurl= links to archive.is unless the community consenses not to at that RFC. --Lexein (talk) 06:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I read through your posts here before commenting, Lexein, but I do disagree. It's not just a question of advertising (even though I do feel we shouldn't be allowing/encouraging this kind of promotional use of Wikipedia). We could face a practical problem if the service turns out not to be viable. I don't think a "help" page is all that necessary just because uses of a particular site currently exist. If people are confused when editing an article that contains archive.is uses, I can't really see them looking for or finding this page. I think it's much more likely they would simply go to archive.is and see the documentation there, which is more than enough. As opposed to helping people understand the current uses, the existence of this page seems more like an implied encouragement to use, and a trust/endorsement of that service, to create new uses in more articles, for editors to find when they're looking through help pages for reference creation options. I don't think we should be presenting archive.is as one of those yet, if ever. equazcion � | 09:43, 9 Oct 2013 (UTC)
 * Editors come here (not readers) because they might search for help archive.is. That's a very small group of people, so the "promotional" argument is specious; there's really no reason to worry. If you're worried about a promotional tone in this help document, that's straightforwardly addressed; promotional tone is not a reason for deletion. In fact, please reread WP:ATA. As far as I can see, there's no consensus for preventing all future use (or all past use) of archive.is. Further, worries about the future, when the future is not certain, aren't reasonable arguments for cessation of documentation of a service. Finally, if you're so concerned about people happening upon this page from Google, we can just __NOINDEX__ it. It'll take a while to drop in search rank and then off, but it will, eventually. --Lexein (talk) 18:31, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment on userfication For Hellknowz, Hasteur, or anyone else who would like to userfy this page, please indicate whether you would be willing to "host" it, or alternatively whose userspace you think it should go in. Others are free to do as they please, but if I end up as the closing admin, I'll disregard arguments for userfication without any set target. --BDD (talk) 16:35, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I assert a negative response in regards to interest to "host" the page up for discussion. There might be a few who are interested (like ) but the good faith that Archive.is has burned (to the point where we're making significant changes to how the API is used) indicates in my mind that a help manual for Archive.is is never going to be useful here. Hasteur (talk) 16:48, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Not me either. I wouldn't do anything with it as I wouldn't have made it until RfC passed. I said "delete if not endorsed later" and the RfC does not look like community endorsement to me. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hm. Looks like "no consensus" to me at the RFC, just like here, rife as it is with incompletely supported claims, wrong targeting, very real paranoia, crystal ball thinking, rampant assumptions of bad faith, uninformed !votes, false comparisons and other logical fallacies, and rather deep disrespect for the goals of the encyclopedia; it just goes on and on. I wish I could just annotate each "destroy"-like !vote with specific annotation balloons listing each fallacy, as opposed to repetitively commenting, and cluttering the page itself. IMHO pushing for userfication ahead of closure seems a bit "thumb on scale", though. I hope the closing admin reads not just the !votes, but the strong counterarguments in the responding comments. I'll be addressing tone, in the meantime, since I think that may allay some concerns. --Lexein (talk) 14:03, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * That's about the most rose colored interpretation I could extract out of the "Should we allow Archive.is" If anything your vocal minority viewpoint seems to be the thumb on the scale to try and keep.  Hasteur (talk) 14:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm simply not wrong, which frustrates you. There's been no valid, on-policy, relevant reason shown to delete or userfy this document, as long as archive.is remains in use anywhere in Wikipedia public-facing articles. And I don't see anything rose-colored about the FUD and ABF exhibited by the "make it go away" faction; it's amusing that you'd claim I see anything rose colored about this debacle, including on this page. --Lexein (talk) 22:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you have made your stance very clear throughout all the relevant discussions and what I see is users who disagree both with certain points and more importantly with which points carry how much importance. The issue is that you are convinced they are wrong so much that you won't even accept the possibility that there are other views and priorities that are not wrong. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hrmph. "Won't even accept" what? I haven't seen any valid, on-policy, relevant reasons for removing documentation for in-use resources. Have you? --Lexein (talk) 22:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Lexein, would you adopt this page if it's userfied? --BDD (talk) 18:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll probably end up having to, but that's not approval to userfy or delete, nor approval for early closure. I really want closure to pay attention to usage, policy, and general extant practice, and the editors and administrators !voting for moving to Help. I'm the only advocate here for all archival services which serve our purpose, and not an advocate for any particular one. --Lexein (talk) 22:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Early closure? This discussion has ran for close to a month, well beyond the usual one-week listing period. --BDD (talk) 16:03, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I know, but it seems short, given the low diversity of editors discussing. Oh well. --Lexein (talk) 02:32, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.