But it seems like, at least for the ports I’ve clicked on, the source code is not necessarily on IF Archive. The versions are on various websites or on itch or on github. There’s a version of Roger Firth’s Cloak of Darkness page rescued from the Wayback machine because the original site disappeared, but I don’t think that’s being updated to include some of the newer sources.
I’m wondering if there’s anything else that would make sense to do to preserve the different sources, in case any of these web pages or itch accounts or github accounts disappear in the future. Encouraging the porters to add the sources to IF Archive? (I’m not sure what directory would make the most sense.) Directly pasting source code into the port’s IFWiki page, if the license allows? Something else?
The Roger Firth’s page I’d pulled from the Wayback machine is a bit of a mess and certainly could do with replacing. I am happy to do the hosting for any replacement. What I do not have time for is to maintain it. If somebody would volunteer to do the leg work, I’d be very happy to discuss logistics.
I wonder whether IFTF could do with a website for resurrecting dead websites.
It would be like the IF Archive, and maybe even part of it, but specifically for browsable web pages.
It could save money in the long run – instead of paying for the https://spagmag.org/ domain and others in perpetuity each website could be a subdomain.
Oh… I misunderstood how the unboxing service works: I assumed you could go to SPAG’s index page and link from there, but it looks like you can’t (because the URLs are based on the file hash?)
Edit: oh, wait. This is an artifact of the SPAG site being hard-coded to be at the root of the file tree, not of how the unboxing service works. So it would be possible to upload a version of a website that would work; it’s just that relative links have been out of fashion for a long time (what is WRONG with web devs, anyway?)
This is saving $16/year for the privilege of breaking all historical links to the site. It’s a bad tradeoff.
If I were resurrecting a historical site for which we’d lost the domain name, then yes, that’s what I’d do – use the subdomain of ifarchive.org as canonical.
IFWiki has links to the different versions of Cloak of Darkness, but so far, I don’t think any of the actual code is on IFWiki. I’m asking what steps we can take to preserve or organize the code. I’m not sure if people want to put the code on IFWiki or not.
We do need to update that (anybody with an email account can register and contribute) but I think the question was more about the possibility that the source code might disappear from the internet.
The Internet Archive seems to be able to archive nearly anything and it’s easy to submit a URL, so maybe that’s the answer. (In contrast, the IF Archive seems to operate largely by consent.)
Yes, my point is that I’d like to see the IFWIKI page for cloak of darkness updated with the source code for all the ports and that the WIKI is the most logical place to put it.