About a couple of hours ago I watched a video on Youtube where this guy tried to find the original image source of a meme, but couldn't find it. He brought up link rot, and honestly I never really gave it much thought until now. Just think of all the websites, and files that were lost to time. I think a lot of us here have websites that we'll never be able to fully experience again. Sure you can go to the Wayback archive and see anything that was captured in that moment of time, but any images or links that were shared from outside sources are most likely gone. This phenomenon is just going to get worse because people rely too much on Discord to host their communities these days, and all of that information shared on places like Discord will eventually be lost to time much like the links that are gone due to link rot. Anyways I thought it was a interesting topic to bring up here, because I haven't really seen many people talking about it in webmaster communities. To me this is just another great example of why forums are still needed and are the most valuable way to share information online. But even then those forums can eventually be taken offline whether it's due to the admin losing interest, passing away, or hosting issues. I suppose link rot is inevitable online, but is there anyway to fully prevent it from happening?
