The Internet Shadowrun Conservation Project (ISCP), Fighting link rot the crowdsourcing way Options

[ThatPaolo]

So, I started putting back the Archive online again and I noticed that a lot of the 2000+ entries there were leading the unwary visitor to the dreary 404 place.

Not good. A lot of Shadowrun knowldege has been lost in the years, with people moving out out colleges, hosting companies shutting down, etc...

So I went and clicked on every single link that was there and kept track of the ones that were still somehow active. It turns out that we still have 150+ live links that - addd to the articles that I was already hosting directly in the Archive - turn out to be a total of 397 valid entries.

150 links pointing to sites that may or may not be around tomorrow. We need to do something.

My idea would be to split these 150 links between a number of Dumpshockers and do the following things:

1. Verify that the link is not a duplicate (I can do this at the database level, so let's skip it for now)
2. Is the site still active?
2.a if not, make a copy of the content
2.b if it is still actively mantained, contact the owner and see if we can create a mirror
3. Notify me with the entry ID, and provide me the content for inclusion in the new Archive

If the owner wants to mantain control over the content, that's fantastic, but this should definitely cut down on dead links and improve the overall usefulness.

So, Dumpshock, what do you think? Are you game? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)