LogFAQs > #979955247

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Just reading this all of a sudden made me remember Cheat Code Central. Man, I don't even think that made it through the 00's.

I used to use a site called GIA for guides back in college in the 90s. I remember using it to solve some of the puzzles in Riven.

That site shutting down is actually what brought me here - I needed to look for a game, GIA had shut down, and I found myself on GameFAQs.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Can't the Way Back Machine site locate a decent amount of old stuff?

Yes and no. It mostly depends on what you're looking for.

Most web archiving services generally have to go trawling for sites via links, so if a site wasn't strongly linked to it was potentially easy for archivers to miss. On top of which, people who run sites only have to add a single .txt file to their site to prevent archiving:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt

There's definitely a ton of stuff that used to exist that's gone poof (presumably forever) because the Wayback Machine never managed to catch it. Which I know because I've looked for it and it wasn't there. In some cases, you'll ironically get a page or two from a site, but most of the rest of it just isn't there (worst is when you get a menu page complete with tons of links, and literally none of the links work).

And then, of course, there's the logic most people never really think about - what happens when the archiving services also shut down? There's no real reason why the Internet Archive is somehow eternal or immune to shutting down. If the money or interest in maintaining it ever runs out, everything they've archived can easily disappear. Same for Wikipedia - most people sort of assume it's there forever now, but there's always the chance that we wake up one day and it's just not there.

But ignoring all that, even with archiving, services are still gone. Sure, you can potentially find old sites or posts from 30 years ago (if you can remember the URL or know how to look),

When GameFAQs goes, you may be able to track down and reread old posts from the site, but the site itself (as an active entity) will still be gone. At least some of the sites I have nostalgia for that are gone forever were old-school chat sites and MUDs that are just gone forever.



Zeus posted...

That's what you were saying like a decade ago!

Nah. I was already complaining about the site a decade ago, but I was a lot more optimistic about its lifespan and activity then than I am now.



Zeus posted...

Tempus fugit. Like I'll sometimes mention, a teenager once asked for directions and I started to tell him where something was, only for somebody I was with to interrupt and mention those landmarks I referenced hadn't been around for longer than the kid had been alive.

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

I've definitely noticed I've been having a lot more "Yeah, over there by where the [insert landmark here] used to be" type conversations over the last decade or so. Usually it's when I'm talking to someone who actually knows the places I'm referring to so they get it, but occasionally one will slip out and you suddenly realize that this person you're talking to is going to have no idea where the old 7-11 that burned down 20 years ago was, so it's not going to help them very much for you to mention it.