3

It also looks like a campaign to advance an agenda. To wit, this question:

Why does 1.1.1.1 not resolve archive.is?

At first glance, the question seems reasonable, even if a question about a domain name service is off-topic here.

The self-answer, however, is nothing more than a screed against the business practices of Cloudflare and their use of their public DNS.

More troubling to me is that it has received 34k views in the 15 hours since the question was first posted. That's orders of magnitude more than we ever see here. Further, the question has 40+ upvotes and the top answer 50+. That's also unprecedented here.

Is this only because it hit the Hot Network Questions? Or is something more nefarious going on?

Further, where does this question really belong, if anywhere? Web Masters?

9
  • Thanks for posting this was hopping to find to do something similar this night. I agree that the referred thread is off-topic here, I don't think that it belongs to web masters because the OP didn't posted it from as the web master or archive.is. Perhaps it could be on topic on Super User. Maybe this question should be asked on Meta Stack Exchange :)
    – Rubén Mod
    Oct 4, 2019 at 20:57
  • 3
    The question was trending on Hacker News which I suspect drove the bulk of the traffic. I was thinking of voting to migrate or close, but given the active discussion elsewhere held back.
    – John C
    Oct 5, 2019 at 5:09
  • 1
    A question is eligible to enter HNQ after 8 hours, so there were 7 hours to garner 34k views... which is 5000 views/hour on average. And well, I visited that question from HNQ. Can't underestimate the power of HNQ and visitors from Stack Overflow (the specific site, not the whole network), moreover if it's shared outside of SE network...
    – Andrew T.
    Oct 5, 2019 at 9:02
  • Not sure why the ♦ moderators didn't acted some way regarding the referred question so far. Are all the local moderators on self-imposed suspension of / low down activity?
    – Rubén Mod
    Oct 5, 2019 at 18:14
  • 1
    @Rubén its the weekend
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Oct 5, 2019 at 19:14
  • it was on reddit (/r/programming and mostly more too..) and Hacker News
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Oct 5, 2019 at 19:15
  • 1
    @SathyajithBhat So the answer is yes, the self-imposed low down activity... because the weekend ... people should refrain themselves from making >34k views posts on Fridays :D
    – Rubén Mod
    Oct 5, 2019 at 19:55
  • @Rubén I'm yet to see anyone explain how archive.is is offtopic here, when archive.org and Google Search are not. Your calls to the moderators not doing their job by not removing content that's not offtopic are puzzling at best.
    – cnst
    Oct 5, 2019 at 22:38
  • 2
    @cnst I didn't made that call at all
    – Rubén Mod
    Oct 5, 2019 at 22:40

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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As mentioned in comment the question was seen on Reddit, Lobsters, Hacker News which I suspect is responsible for driving the traffic. We can't determine sources of traffic per question so that's about my best guess.

I don't see anything obviously wrong or suspicious.. though I agree about the question being more suitable for Super User and migrated there accordingly since it is more about how DNS works than about the specific webapp

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  • 5
    It does not belong on Super User, so you have it back. One of ServerFault / WebMasters / NetworkEngineering might be more suitable.
    – DavidPostill
    Oct 5, 2019 at 20:11
  • Please kindly explain how this is off-topic for webapps. Archive.is is most definitely a webapp, and it could be argued that so is 1.1.1.1.
    – cnst
    Oct 5, 2019 at 20:13
  • 2
    isn't 1.1.1.1 a DNS provider? I'd argue this more about how DNS works than a specific webapp
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Oct 6, 2019 at 10:14
  • The question is not about DNS, the question is about a webapp. Are you seriously deleting this without ever explaining how it's offtopic on webapps? Only two users voted against this question — "Rubén", providing reasons that don't even apply to the question, and "ale", claiming that it's just too popular (??). Are you seriously just going to delete the question on request of mere two users, without any sort of a consensus about the question being offtopic? Clearly the majority of users disagree with it it being offtopic. Otherwise, more people would have voted to close. Please undelete.
    – cnst
    Oct 9, 2019 at 0:45
  • err? I didn't delete it? Not sure why it says I deleted
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Oct 9, 2019 at 3:44
  • @SathyajithBhat The referred question is still open. If it can't be migrated and it's off-topic here, it should be closed, right? Unfortunately I can't vote to close it again. Should I flagged for moderator attention? If so, adding a link to this answer will be enough?
    – Rubén Mod
    Jun 10, 2020 at 21:18
-2

The archive.today website is certainly a webapp. Questions about quirks, bugs and peculiarities in , , , , , , , , and many other websites, are all on-topic here (per my understanding — please correct me if I'm wrong), so, it's unclear what makes you judge archive.today any differently, and why its unavailability with Cloudflare is somehow offtopic. In fact, we even already have tag with 24 questions, as early as early as 2010 (due to incoming migrations). How's archive.is any different?!

Likewise, it can also be argued that 1.1.1.1 itself is a webapp as well (this is where we get a bit of an intersection with some other sites on SE network), however, this question is very specific about archive.today, and doesn't go into the whole performance and other reasons around 1.1.1.1, so, it's definitely on the WebApps side.

And which exact agenda is being advanced? What exactly are you alleging here? Are you doubting that StackExchange voting is fair and balanced, in this very specific case, but in no other cases?

If anyone disagrees with the question or the answer, they're free to downvote. The number of upvotes greatly exceeds the number of downvotes; even with alternative answers available, which haven't gotten quite as many votes even after being posted around the same time, and I think this proves that my original question and answer pair are neutral enough.

The issue of archive.is not resolving through Cloudflare comes up every now and then, without any good answers. I had a genuine desire to explain and document in a neutral way what it's all about. Hence the QA. (As has been pointed out, StackExchange encourages you to ask and answer a question in one go — in fact, you can provide an answer to your own question right away before even publishing the question itself, e.g., publish a QA as an atomic pair.) I believe this question is most on-topic at WebApps, and IS, in fact, actually fully ontopic here, too, because the primary subject and usecase being a web-app — archive.is. I am not affiliated with archive.today in any way, either, although I do think it's a pretty cool service.

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  • I posted a followup question on meta in light of unwarranted intervention by a moderator: webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4706/35808 Note that they didn't even consult with the community before moving the question to just about the least suitable site on the network — they bounced it back in a jiffy (I'd argue that it's further confirmation of it being ontopic here at webapps).
    – cnst
    Oct 5, 2019 at 21:37
  • 3
    I didn't find the answer "neutral" at all, but I'll concede archive.is can be considered a web app. My larger concern was the exceptionally high traffic it received, compared to most of the content here.
    – ale
    Oct 5, 2019 at 22:25
  • @ale, and that's your opinion, which is clearly not shared by the community. Instead of letting the community decide, you instead bug the moderators to perform unwarranted censorship on your behalf. If it was as non-neutral as you seem to portray it, it wouldn't have gotten as many votes. How exactly do you explain the votes? Do you not believe in the models used by StackExchange, or what? What's wrong with the question receiving high traffic? For someone active on the site, shouldn't you be happy with greater popularity? Or you have a hidden agenda against non-VC-backed startups?
    – cnst
    Oct 5, 2019 at 22:35
  • 3
    I didn't bug any moderators; I just called out something that was rather unusual around here. And you keep saying that the "community" is for the question, but that doesn't track, because if it was just the usual community voting it wouldn't have gotten nearly so many votes in so short a time; it's obviously getting votes from people who spend their time elsewhere on the network and have basically flooded this site to vote on this one question. I'd love for them to stick around and participate with the rest of the site.
    – ale
    Oct 5, 2019 at 22:38

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