What's Your Favorite Website?

[Ruby]

Let's get some positive vibes going here! Sure, there's lots of things that we wish the internet was better at, but there's some bright spots out there, too, right?

Maybe it's a cute blog that tends to fit your mood juuuuust right, or maybe it's a search engine that doesn't throw a bunch of garbage in your face before showing you results. I have a feeling that you know about something cool that the rest of us don't, so tell us about it! As long as it's not a site that you own, that goes on another board.

[Ruby]

I'm going to start off with my personal favorite, the Internet Archive. It's best known as the site with the Wayback Machine where you can view webpages as they appeared years or even decades ago, but honestly I use the rest of the site a whole lot more!

The Archive has a ton of books, movies, radio shows, TV episodes, commercials, magazines, old VHS tapes, scraps of paper somebody found in the bottom of their grandma's closet, and oh so much more littered all across it, and I love it dearly. There's such a mountain of material there that you could spend a lifetime going through it all, and I just might. Picture it as the biggest thrift shop that you've ever visited, except everything is free and it's open all night!

I often use it to check out books to read (they have a library system built-in), or maybe to listen to some old radio plays or find episodes of an ancient TV game show. There are also a ton of older games on there, and some of them are playable directly through a web emulator. They even sometimes have some more modern stuff on there too, they aren't the best at moderation... I'm just saying...

[JamieKaye]

Whoaaaa I didn't know it straight up had an archive of all that media too. That explains how I've heard researchers talk about how the site is important for them.

[mii]

It took me a while to really think about it, and while I don't think it's my favourite per se, I don't really think I have a 'favourite' at all. But for one that I would like to share and that I think is worth reading and enjoying, I'll present The DIgital Antiquarian. Jimmy here has been slowly over the years writing about the history of computer games from the very earliest computers, and is currently caught up to the late 90s. It took me a couple years to catch up reading through the archives, and ever since I've been coming in to read every time he posts a new article. He tries to focus on the history of the people, companies, and games where he can but he does have his own preferences and biases, though he is quick to admit those and his own lack of skill with certain games. He does give everything he writes about a fair shake though, I very rarely find myself displeased with an article. He always lists his sources and where he gets his information from, and he does take his commenters seriously in terms of critiques and input.

He also writes about historical events/objects in the world, but I never really got into those articles. They may also be worth a read if you enjoy reading well-researched historical pieces.

[Ruby]

It took me a while to really think about it, and while I don't think it's my favourite per se, I don't really think I have a 'favourite' at all. But for one that I would like to share and that I think is worth reading and enjoying, I'll present The DIgital Antiquarian. Jimmy here has been slowly over the years writing about the history of computer games from the very earliest computers, and is currently caught up to the late 90s.

Very cool! I like that he covers a lot of Interactive Fiction games too, which is really my genre these days, especially if you chose to include visual novels under that description, hehe. I see that he has his blog available in ebook format, I'll be downloading those to read through right now, thank you...

[JamieKaye]

I'll present The DIgital Antiquarian. Jimmy here has been slowly over the years writing about the history of computer games from the very earliest computers, and is currently caught up to the late 90s.

Okay this RULES.

[mii]

Very cool! I like that he covers a lot of Interactive Fiction games too, which is really my genre these days, especially if you chose to include visual novels under that description, hehe. I see that he has his blog available in ebook format, I'll be downloading those to read through right now, thank you...

IF is his bailiwick if that pleases you, he used to IF work himself and is quite passionate about it still; he will poke in articles about noteworthy IF works of the time period he's covering. He is a bit old-fashioned and often calls them 'text adventures' still, though he does make the effort to differentiate where it's important.

Okay this RULES.

It was kind of funny. I don't think I have a favourite page, not anymore, not for years. But that one is one of the few that I check with an actual earnest desire rather than daily routine, so I think it counts. The older historical sections are probably my favourite, and I think it's an excellent preservation-adjacent work in terms of video games... which is also important in this age of digital loss.

[noIdea]

I'm going to start off with my personal favorite, the Internet Archive. It's best known as the site with the Wayback Machine where you can view webpages as they appeared years or even decades ago, but honestly I use the rest of the site a whole lot more!

It’s a bit out of subject since it mostly concern the wayback machine part, but if people are gonna talk about the internet archive, I gotta talk about their official extension. It allow to archive the page the navigator is currently visualising, but also to automatically set up archive if the page hasn’t been archived in a while, open a previous version directly from the contextual menu, and to search the archive for related content. It’s probably not the best archiving extension (something like archivebox that can push to multiple archive at once including in local is more polyvalent) and isn’t always responsive, but it’s still very usefull. Honestly I really wish I had installed it years ago along with an extension to store navigation history beyond the few months that most navigators offer by default, because there is a lot of stuff I only vaguely remember that I can’t find on google anymore.

In terms of others website, I admit that it’s a lot of site that are kinda enshitiffied that I stay more for the people I can’t find anywhere else than the sites itself. Outside of that, I mostly read blog. I like reading the Critpoints Blog, probably one of the best ressources on game design out there. I remember thinking I should read the architecture of console serie but procrastinating it. There apparently is [url=https://blink.copetti.org/] a new version of the site made to work on retro computer so that’s interesting. I remember hanging out a lot on a french nintendo website a decade ago but all that’s left active is a confidential discord server and one website about metroid https://planetezebes.com/

[mii]

Necropost apologies but I did want to share this as it has consumed my morning.

The Digital Graveyard

A loving tribute to internet protocols, services, programs, webpages, and cultural artifacts that are gone but not necessarily forgotten. The author is Turkish and writes from their own experiences where possible. It's all very carefully detailed and very informative. My only real complaint is that I couldn't find some things without directly searching for them - they weren't listed under the year of "death" given as far as I could tell.

It was a very interesting stroll down memory lane for a lot of things I remember from my childhood and early internet days. A lot of "oh yeah... I wondered where that went."

[JamieKaye]

Necropost apologies but I did want to share this as it has consumed my morning.

The Digital Graveyard

A loving tribute to internet protocols, services, programs, webpages, and cultural artifacts that are gone but not necessarily forgotten. The author is Turkish and writes from their own experiences where possible. It's all very carefully detailed and very informative. My only real complaint is that I couldn't find some things without directly searching for them - they weren't listed under the year of "death" given as far as I could tell.

It was a very interesting stroll down memory lane for a lot of things I remember from my childhood and early internet days. A lot of "oh yeah... I wondered where that went."

Wow how did I miss that ICQ finally pulled the plug? that's nutty. At this point it seems if it's gone on this long you may as well keep it going forever. This is a fun little site thanks for sharing!!

No apologies for necroposting allowed. heehee