Editors at Wikipedia have reached a consensus to remove all links to Archive.today, a web archiving service cited more than 695,000 times across the encyclopedia. The decision also calls for adding the site to Wikipedia’s spam blacklist, effectively preventing future links from being added.
Archive.today — which operates under multiple domain names, including archive.is and archive.ph — has been widely used to access web pages behind paywalls and to preserve online content for citation purposes. Its utility made it a frequent source for Wikipedia references. However, editors now argue that the service poses security and reliability concerns.
According to discussions on Wikipedia’s internal forums, the decision stems in part from allegations that Archive.today embedded JavaScript code into its CAPTCHA page that unknowingly caused users’ browsers to send search requests to the blog Gyrovague, operated by blogger Jani Patokallio. Patokallio said the activity began on January 11 and functioned as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, increasing traffic to his site and potentially raising hosting costs.
Wikipedia editors also cited evidence suggesting that some archived pages on Archive.today may have been altered, including instances where Patokallio’s name appeared inserted into snapshots. These claims raised concerns about the platform’s reliability as a neutral archival record.
The service was previously blacklisted by Wikipedia in 2013 before being reinstated in 2016. This latest move reverses that earlier decision, with editors stating that Wikipedia “should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users’ computers to run a DDoS attack.”
Patokallio had previously examined Archive.today’s ownership in a 2023 blog post, describing it as “an opaque mystery.” While he was unable to identify a confirmed owner, he speculated the service might be operated by a single individual with technical expertise and access to European infrastructure. More recently, he shared emails in which the site’s webmaster allegedly requested that he temporarily remove his critical post. After Patokallio declined, he said he received what he described as escalating threats.
In response, a blog linked from Archive.today defended the service’s role, arguing that its value to Wikipedia extended beyond bypassing paywalls and included helping address copyright concerns. The site’s apparent owner later wrote that they would “scale down the ‘DDoS’” and criticized media coverage of the controversy.
Wikipedia’s updated guidance now advises editors to replace Archive.today links with direct links to original sources or alternative archival services such as the Wayback Machine. The move marks a significant shift in policy for one of the internet’s most frequently cited web archiving tools.