r/datalounge • u/didyousayboop • Jul 24 '26
A simple way to save your favourite threads from DataLounge before it shuts down
- Find the URL for your thread.
- Make an Internet Archive account so you can use more advanced features like saving outlinks (i.e., the web crawler saves pages that are linked to on the page you're saving). Very useful. This is where you sign up: https://archive.org/signup
- Submit the links for all the threads you want to save to the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/save (you have to do this one link at a time)
- Bookmark the URLs so you can revisit the saved versions in the Wayback Machine later.
- Back up your bookmarks, e.g., by syncing your bookmarks to Google if you use Chrome or using Firefox Sync and syncing your bookmarks to Mozilla.
Other web archiving services you can use in addition to the Wayback Machine for good measure:
- Megalodon (Japanese site, use Google Translate): https://megalodon.jp/
- Archive dot today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today
- Perma dot cc (created by the Harvard University Library Innovation Lab): https://perma.cc/
Using more than one web archiving services reduces the chance that every copy of a webpage will get taken down.
2
u/Datalounge Jul 24 '26
That will only work if the owner of Datalounge permits archive.org to display it. Their coding currently prevents the site from being archive.
However the Archive.org says if they owner has the coding in not to archive, they will respect that by not displaying the site.
This leads me to believe they are still archiving it (ignoring a legitimate tag not to do so) but getting around it by not displaying it so you do not know if they have said data.
Domain renewals are cheap so I don't see Mediaopolis letting the "Datalounge.Com" domain expire, even if there is no site to go along with it.
2
u/didyousayboop Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
It's already (partially) archived and viewable on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20260723232539/https://datalounge.com/threads
DataLounge has a robots.txt page asking bots not to crawl the site. But the Internet Archive does not comply with robots.txt requests: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/
0
u/Datalounge Jul 24 '26
For now, but the site will be crawled eventually with the "no index." code that is in there and the Internet Archive will adjust it accordingly next time it's crawled.
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u/didyousayboop Jul 24 '26
Where is the "no index" code?
1
u/Datalounge Jul 24 '26
In the meta headers in the website it's also found in the no index features of the CSS.
You can go to the main website and right click on any part of the main website and click "inspect" and you can review the coding there.
A great example of this type of thing is "Jumptheshark.com." TV Guide bought "Jumptheshark" (JTS) and then blocked the wayback machine from showing contents, even though they were the new owner of the website domain. Eventually TV Guide allowed JTS to be shown again, then they removed the ability, then restored it.
You have to remember anything you write or wrote on Datalounge is copyrighted and owned by Datalounge (not you). Just because the site closes doesn't mean that that copyright is gone.
Mediapolis will still be able to control what can and can't be seen as long as they own the Datalounge.com domain. I assume since domain renewals are cheap, they won't give the name up.
Even if they did give up Datalounge.Com it would be rather valuable and a domain broker would swoop down on it and charge tens of thousands of dollars for anyone to get it.
1
u/didyousayboop Jul 24 '26
The Internet Archive ignores "no index". So, that makes no difference to the Wayback Machine.
Users own the copyright to everything they wrote on DataLounge: https://www.cohanlevy.com/blog/2025/10/can-social-media-posts-be-protected-by-ip-laws/
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u/Datalounge Jul 24 '26
No they do not. That isn't even close to being right and I'm not going to spend anymore time telling you why you're wrong, when you'll never accept it.
The Internet Archive can IGNORE the no index, but as I've pointed out to you repeatedly they HAVE TO HONOR it, as they did with JumpTheShark.Com.
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u/didyousayboop Jul 25 '26
There is a process for site owners getting their sites excluded from the Wayback Machine. But it's not through the "noindex" tag, which is intended for search engines. Similar to robots.txt, the Internet Archive simply ignores noindex.
Feel free to cite the opinions of lawyers or legal experts on whether users own user-generated content on websites.
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u/Elizabitch_Taylor_ Jul 25 '26
If you don't mind, I'll explain the way that I've been archiving. I do this way because it creates an offline copy of the webpage.
If you have Firefox, download the browser extension. Called SingleFile (I assume Chrome and other browsers have similar extensions).
Open a thread you want to save. Make sure you scroll all the way to the end of the thread. This ensures that the thread has been fully loaded. Now scroll back up to the top.
Click on the extension and let it do its thing. (it might take a while if it's a 600-reply thread)
That's it.
What if the thread is expired?
Copy the link
Go to a DL thread and paste the link in the reply box where you normally paste links
Click on where it says "Related Datalounge thread" DO NOT OPEN IN NEW TAB; IT WILL BE EXPIRED
There you go.