oolite.space on web.archive.org

[user2357]

However, it is sometimes possible to save, manually, more than just the home page or other basic pages by means of the "Save Page Now" feature on https://web.archive.org/.

You want to indicate you could trigger correct backups manually?

I wish ... If only ... Actually, it was by trying to do a manual save of oolite.space that I discovered that web.archive.org doesn't do it anymore since after 2023jul22. I was responding to Cholmondely's statement, trying to indicate that, although web.archive.org often does not save everything on a website by itself and its own automatisations, users themselves can follow the hyperlink rabbit-trails across a website, and save each link manually, in an attempt to save more of the site than what web.archive.org often does by its own, automatic self.

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Thanks for explaining the version control and branching concepts, hiran. The sci-fi time-travel analogy was just what I needed to get my head around that.

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Hi, all! )

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And now pay attention - TimeMachine does not run JS scripts - it only downloads HTML, CSS and images. That is why on the archive website you see only a “blank” page of our website.

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In general, IMHO, the solution to the problem may be to write util code that will automatically create a full HTML version of the site from the source blocks and give this version to the archive. To perform this kind of task, a server is required. We have servers, this is not a problem. I'll try to find time and think about this issue.

Thank you, timer. Things make much more sense now. I needed that.

Ideally, I would like to see easy access to a simple means of tracking changes on oolite.space, please, for the sake of preservation of our developmental history. Elite and Oolite are not just games anymore -- they have long since become historical in nature. In my own research over almost the past decade and a half, through websites and video interviews and presentations and magazine articles and books from even before 1984 in an attempt to understand the context more completely, there are still many questions unanswered and, apparently, now unanswerable, due to holes in the historical record. We are the co-custodians of a significant part of this history. We owe it at least to ourselves, if not to Aegidian, Jens, cim and many others, for the literal years of work they put into it; and we also owe it to posterity, to preserve as much detail as possible.

Personally, my main concern is with preservation, and, ideally, preservation of changes. It sounds like GitHub covers preservation well enough. My question is: does GitHub also preserve previous, historical versions of the website, like a history page on the wiki, and like web.archive.org did, of sorts -- so that anyone can track relatively easily the changes from one version of the website to the next, following our struggles and triumphs?

If so, then problem solved. No need for further discussion. ... If not... I, for one, would remain in your debt if you, or anyone, could come up with something nice, please.

[hiran]

While we could assume version control of our website might be sufficient it's purpose and access are different.

If someone searches for Oolite he may well find historic versions on the internet archive. Finding our site's history in our git repository is unlikely. Thus I believe it is worth allowing the internet archive to create good copies.

@timer: you created the site such that it does not require content to be repeated. Whether you keep that pattern or not - it would be wise to involve someone else.