[game_preservation] Preserving Websites

[Andrew Armstrong]

We need to look at some point into helping preserve websites - 
especially ones that simply cease to be. I brought this up off list a 
bit with Henry and Simon a while back - what pipqued my interest again 
was this:

http://www.gamecyte.com/rip-gamecyte-2008-2009

A site I don't think I've ever visited, and if not then I can't recall 
it from memory. It was operating for an entire year, and I'd no clue. 
Well, it's stopping - but no doubt this is something to preserve in some 
way if they then switch off the hosting next month.

The IA crawlers are okay in general, for sites which don't go out of 
business or offline, and if they are setup properly. However many sites 
are not crawled often enough, certainly not to the level of accuracy 
that would be acceptable for preservation (see the example HotU!)

Jason Scott created a task force more dedicated to grabbing sites while 
they are still online, 
http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page - I will join their 
group to see how they operate, and see if I can help or do something.

This is a possible project we can look at working on continually - while 
the IGDA is both a developer orientated group (give or take) and hasn't 
got the funding to do a physical archive, I can help put my efforts into 
this (along with any help we're able to get) just because I don't think 
many other places (any other places?) think about this and other area's 
we're working on.

My thoughts are to maybe just for now list websites which are basically 
shutting with their "death date" and then requesting off the 
owners/webmasters if possible an archived copy of the site for at least 
dark storage on the Internet Archive, if not public access. I've no idea 
if the more accurate/on demand Wayback scanner is another route to take, 
although doens't that require payment to use? (while we have no money ;) )

Thanks in advance to anyone provides a comment, I'd not mind knowing if 
this was worth working on in the future.

Andrew