Assume somebody claims that something absolutely crazy was posted to the web, then removed... either on a government web site, or a major news outlet's site. Your conspiracy theorist buddy shows you "proof" of the shocking truth in the form of an screenshot. Unlike your friend, you know that screenshots are easy to edit with photoshop, and therefore aren't particularly good evidence.

However, what if your buddy showed you the proof from an online archive that everybody trusts? This could be possible, if your buddy could "ping" the Wayback Machine to take a snapshot and store it in its permanent archives... And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Hopefully you've heard of the Wayback Machine... its run by the Internet Archive organization. They have the mind-numbingly complex task of archiving all the content on the internet, or at least trying to. Then the Wayback Machine allows you to look at how the web site appeared in a specific month of the year. Pretty cool stuff... especially since a lot of web sites get taken down after their usefulness has expired... like a politician's web site after they lose an election.

Check out what bexhuff.com looked like in June 2006 2006... ah, the memories...

Well, why not expand upon this? Why not allow helpful individuals suggest when and what to archive? If something absolutely unbelievable is on a web site, and you're afraid it may soon become unavailable, just trigger the Wayback Machine to take a snapshot. At least then you'll have a (mostly) impartial judge.

It could also be extremely helpful in mitigating the flood of requests that occurs when a small web site is linked to from a large web site. After a link gets posted to Digg, Slashdot, or Techcrunch, the massive number of requests can overwhelm a small site's web server, or push them over their monthly bandwidth limit. Instead, the editors of these sites can "ping" the Wayback Machine to take a snapshot... then if an overload happens, redirect the link to the internet archive. Or simply post both links, and let the reader decide which to click.

This sort of API could lend itself to abuse... so there may need to be a "weighing" scheme. Anonymous and first-time posters are given nearly zero priority, and their suggestion puts it in the "archive this month" queue... However, watchdogs and polite editors who use the system often get high priority, and can see their pages archived the same hour.

Other options include the Google Cache and the Coral Cache... both are useful, and might be more receptive than the internet archive project at expanding their APIs... but there's only one Wayback Machine!