Editors of Wikipedia have voted to remove and blacklist all links to Archive.today across the platform following allegations that the archiving service was connected to a distributed denial of service attack.
The decision effectively prevents contributors from adding new Archive.today links to Wikipedia articles and initiates the gradual removal or replacement of existing ones. According to discussions among editors, the service had been linked more than 695,000 times throughout the encyclopedia, making it one of the most frequently cited web archiving tools on the site.
The move comes after concerns were raised within the Wikipedia community that Archive.today had engaged in behavior considered hostile to Wikimedia infrastructure. Specifically, editors cited evidence suggesting that the archiving service was associated with a DDoS attack targeting Wikimedia servers. A DDoS attack floods a target with traffic in an attempt to overwhelm systems and disrupt service availability.
Wikipedia, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, relies on a vast network of volunteer editors to make policy decisions, including those concerning reliable sourcing and acceptable external links. In this case, editors debated whether Archive.today’s alleged actions violated community norms to a degree warranting a full blacklist.
Supporters of the ban argued that allowing links to a service tied to infrastructure attacks posed security and reputational risks. They contended that Wikipedia should not direct readers to platforms that may undermine the technical stability of the broader Wikimedia ecosystem. Critics of the decision, however, reportedly expressed concern about losing access to a widely used archiving tool that preserves webpages that might otherwise disappear due to link rot.
Web archiving services play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of online citations. Because websites frequently update, delete or move content, archived snapshots help ensure that references in Wikipedia articles remain verifiable over time. Archive.today has long been one of several services used by editors to capture and preserve web pages, alongside alternatives such as the Wayback Machine.
With the blacklist now in place, Wikipedia contributors are expected to replace Archive.today links with other archiving platforms where possible. The transition could take time given the volume of existing references embedded across hundreds of thousands of pages.
The incident also highlights the complex relationship between open platforms. Wikipedia depends on third party tools and services to maintain citation integrity, yet it must also safeguard its infrastructure against potential abuse. When disputes arise, governance mechanisms within the Wikipedia community are activated, often resulting in lengthy discussions and formal votes before enforcement actions are taken.
The Wikimedia Foundation has not publicly detailed technical specifics of the alleged DDoS activity, and Archive.today has not widely commented on the claims at the time of reporting. As with many governance decisions on Wikipedia, the enforcement reflects community consensus rather than a unilateral executive directive.
The blacklist underscores the importance of trust, reliability and technical cooperation among online knowledge platforms. In an ecosystem built on volunteer labor and public infrastructure, tensions between services can have far reaching implications for digital preservation and access to information.
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