Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
THE debate over Wikipedia has hit a fever pitch in recent weeks.
Supporters of Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, are pitted against traditionalists who call the site inaccurate and irresponsible.
The latest salvo came this week thanks to Rogers Cadenhead, who did a bit of cybersleuthing and reported on Workbench that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, had altered his own Wikipedia biography. Wired News picked up Mr. Cadenhead's discovery, and a heated debate ensued on Wikipedia discussion boards.
According to Mr. Cadenhead's interpretation, Mr. Wales made the changes to play down the role of his former editor, Larry Sanger, by deleting references to him as a co-founder. When other volunteer editors undid his edits, Mr. Wales repeated them twice.
As Wired News points out, Wikipedia warns that editing one's own bio "can open the door to rather immature behavior and loss of dignity."
Mr. Wales told Wired News he wasn't trying to change history, but merely clarifying technical details regarding Mr. Sanger's role at Wikipedia.
Mr. Sanger, who left Wikipedia in 2002, took to the discussion boards. Mr. Wales' edits were "a futile process," he wrote, "because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication" the truth will prevail.
A few weeks earlier, John Seigenthaler Sr., a former newspaper editor, wrote an op-ed article in USA Today complaining that Wikipedia's entry on him asserted that he had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. A sleuth identified the anonymous prankster, and Mr. Wales, while insisting on the encyclopedia's reliability, announced that Wikipedia would no longer allow anonymous users to create entries.
Shortly thereafter, Wikipedia got a much-needed boost when a study by the journal Nature (nature.com) concluded that Wikipedia's science-oriented entries were only slightly less accurate than those in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Still, Wikipedia, which dwarfs traditional encyclopedias in scope, faces the potential for inaccuracy -- or abuse. Anyone can edit any entry at any time. The entries for George Bush and John Kerry had to be frozen during last year's election because of constant vandalism. There are dozens of accounts of people editing entries to suit their own business or personal interests, or their biases.
But Wikipedia's weakness is also its greatest strength. With thousands of editors, most of them interested in accuracy, errors and vandalism are usually cleaned up quickly. And entries are living organisms, constantly updated. Within hours of his death, the entry for the actor John Spencer carried the news.
Mr. Sanger left Wikipedia, he said at the time, because it gave too much power to "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers." He says his latest endeavor, Digital Universe, will combine the strengths of Wikipedia with those of a traditional reference work. With $10 million in backing, Digital Universe, called "a Wikipedia for grown-ups" by The Register, a technology news site, will go online next month (digitaluniverse.net). It will allow anyone to contribute and edit entries, but experts vouching for the accuracy of entries will oversee major areas of content, according to ZDNet Asia.
Whether such a product will be as wide-ranging as Wikipedia, or as trustworthy as Britannica, is unclear. But between all those, and the thousands of other available sources out there, nobody can complain that information is hard to come by.
'Do Not Taunt Panexa' -- It's derivative of the famous commercial spoof "Happy Fun Ball" from "Saturday Night Live" (in part, it's an homage), but StayFree magazine's send-up of prescription-drug ads at panexa.com is still a hoot. The vague language, the inane puffery and the endless safety warnings are just what TV viewers have come to expect from a real ad. The possible side-effects for "Panexa" are "everything you think you see becomes a Tootsie Roll to you, night vision, taste hallucinations (where everything tastes 'gamey' or 'oakey')." DAN MITCHELL
WHAT'S ONLINE Complete links are at nytimes.com/business.
E-mail: whatsonline@nytimes.com.