Comment on Archive.today CAPTCHA page executes DDoS; Wikipedia considers banning site

• TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think you have a very severe misunderstanding of the Wikipedia Library, which I have access to and frequently use. The WML allows active editors in good standing to access paywalled sources.

  • You must have an account which is 6+ months old, has made 500 edits, has 10+ edits in the last month, and is not blocked.
  • You must first apply to gain access.
  • For publications with limited subscriptions, you must individually apply on top of your WML access.
  • Critically: the WML does not host any of these publications. You are taken to them via a portal and given an access token.

  I can’t emphasize enough how absurd this comparison is. “Solar farms exist; building a Dyson sphere would be basically the same thing. Let’s get to work.”

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  • Aatube@thriv.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I am an active editor lol. I’m saying that the proposal is to establish something similar to TWL for media URLs. It would serve the same purpose for editors. Obviously it would take a lot of work to develop this deal but it is workable.

    You must first apply to gain access.

    That’s not true. Anyone who meets the stats you mentioned may access TWL.

    the WML does not host any of these publications

    Indeed, that’s what makes it legally sound and prevents us from needing to relicense. We don’t need to license the content to copyleft for the thing to work.

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    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      That’s not true.

      Okay, then you’ll need to explain the annual emails I’ve gotten saying “Your application to the Wikipedia Library has been approved” after I apparently tripped and fell and filled out a manual form applying to the library every year.

      It doesn’t seem selective if at all once you meet the four aforementioned criteria, but you do need to manually apply.

      The idea you’re talking about, meanwhile, is nonsensical and doesn’t address basically anything about the massive structural problems blacklisting archive.today imposes. I wholly support expanding out the Wikipedia Library, but even this pie-in-the-sky version of it falls too far short of what archive.today provides – and that’s just going forward in an ideal world where you can snap your fingers and make this fantasyland version of the WML happen as soon as archive.today is blacklisted.

      The “backcatalogue”, so to speak, is what’s going to be the most catastrophic part of this by far.

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