When is a Website Inactive or a Guide Outdated?

The question is of course important for this website. We want to give up-to-date information and become a reliable source this way. Thus, we either shouldn’t even list old guides or inactive websites and mark those, that have become outdated or inactive over the course of time.

But how do we know that? It has certainly to do with the life cycle of the information that is presented. For news items, the old adage holds true, now more than ever: “Nothing is older than yesterday’s newspaper”. Which in the end tells us, that yesterday’s news is replaced by today’s news and that it has become part of history. Which means, a website providing news can be seen as inactive after a very short period. I can hardly see a reason why we should keep list it as active, if news haven’t been updated for more than 2 month. And it’s very easy to change it back, should it arise from the dead.

Similar rules can be applied to a forum or a web board. If there isn’t a single post on a board for more than 2 months, it’s inactive. It’s also inactive if the same guy keeps asking “anybody home?” once a week.

Guides are of course different. They remain valid at least until the next patch, but some last even as long as the game itself. (Note to self: research if the Everquest epic quests are still around). Which in the end doesn’t make life any easier. Somebody who doesn’t constantly follow a game can hardly judge if a guide is up-to-date.  Thus, we have to keep a guide marked valid, unless somebody tells us otherwise.

On a side note, there are internet archaeologists out there, digging in the ruins of www.allakhazam.com as seen through the wayback machine at web.archive.org, just to keep project1999.org as true to the original as possible.