I decided to browse the Archive Team website for this assignment. Upon first glance, I thought this site looked rather unprofessional. The layout of the page resembles that of Wikipedia, so I subconsciously linked the two sites together. I think the typically negative stigma of Wikipedia, and the accidental link of that site to archiveteam.org, lessened the credibility of this site. However, the fact that Archive Team is a .org site gave it a little more credibility. Another thing that I found unprofessional about the site was the image that is posted on their front page. In a memelike image it says “WE ARE GOING TO RESCUE YOUR SHIT.” That’s a great intention, but the diction detracts from that. Also, the language throughout the site is pretty informal.

Aside from all of that superficial stuff on the surface of the front page, I think the site is actually pretty useful. I like the intentions and philosophy of the site. I like how easy it is to get involved, but there are no anonymous edits so everyone has to have some verification. I also like the fact that they monitor sites that are important, just in case something was to happen to them. One of these sites is Internet Archive, which is the home for one of the other options for this assignment. They also watch sites that are on decline, which seems useful for when these sites do go down.

Some of the sites are related to education and more “important” topics. Others, however, related to fandom and more “insignificant” topics. Regardless, preserving these sites are important for the future.

As for the legality of the site, I think they are safe. They back up pages of sites and wait until the site gets taken down before the put up their stored replica. If there was an issue, I feel like the primary man who runs the site (Jason Scott) would take the heat for it because he states “This means it’s my fault” under his name.