Reducing link rot with the use of Internet Archive Wayback Machine links

[RichardJActon]

Summary

I have occasionally encountered dead links both the the Turing way and elsewhere in similar resources I was wondering if it might be a good idea to adopt the convention of linking to a current snapshot of external resources on the internet archive's wayback machine by default if the resource cannot be cited and/or linked to with a persistent ID such as a DOI.

The community handbook style guide on external links is a little sparse:

https://book.the-turing-way.org/community-handbook/style#external-links

Do people think that it would be a good idea to adopt this convention, and to to suggest that if persistent IDs be used where possible in external links?

What needs to be done?

• Add guidance to the external links section of the style guide suggesting that links should:
  1. Be a reference added to the bibliography if readily citable
  2. Make use of links based on persistent identifiers such as a DOI if they have them
  3. Reference a suitably recent wayback machine snapshot of the resource if not
• add guidance on how to use the wayback machine to find/create snapshots

potentially

• update all old links to way back machine links
• Point to the section on cross-linking and advise against using external links to reference other part of the book

I would also suggest that in contexts where a reference is made to a resource which is citable and has a persistent resolvable id that a direct link to the ID be included for convenience to avoid the necessity of clicking through to the bibliography and following the link from there.

For example:

[How to pick an electronic laboratory notebook](https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05895-3) by {cite:ps}`Kwok2018eln`

Who can help?

---

Updates