Re: How to write about things that were once notable?

I don't think you need a *notable* source for all information, though, just
a reliable one.  If the project officially shut down, a notice from the
project itself should suffice, right?

I suspect in most of these cases, though, the project never officially
died, just petered out.  If the project's software gives such a thing, you
can cite the information its edit history shows: "As of <date>, the last
contribution to the project was back in <long-ago date>." or "from a high
of <edit rate> in <long ago>, the rate of contributions has slowed to
<rate> as of <now>."

If the site is gone, can you cite e.g. the Internet Archive's last cached
date as an approximate for when it vanished?  Or DNS registration records,
if the name expired?

-Matt


On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Fred Bauder <[email protected]> wrote:

> It's a problem. Information about the current status of these projects
> may have fallen off so much that little or nothing can be obtained from a
> notable source. So you are left with the splash and little else. No
> obituary available.
>
> Fred
>
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Citizendium#So_what_and_how_do_we_write_about_this_sort_of_thing.3F
> >
> > How to write about things like [[Citizendium]], [[Conservapedia]],
> > [[Veropedia]] - things that were notable at the time and got lots of
> > press coverage and hence articles, and which readers may well want to
> > read about into the future - but which have fallen out of notice and
> > so their decline (and, in the case of Veropedia, death) got no
> > coverage and hence we can't answer the reader question "so, whatever
> > did happen to X?"
> >
> > (Anyone who wants to reply saying "Citizendium is alive and well and
> > will rise again!" or similar needs to check the most recent
> > WP:RS-suitable coverage from 2011:
> >
> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/five-year-old-wikipedia-fork-is-dead-in-the-water/
> > and particularly the comments, where people have never heard of this
> > thing and in two weeks no-one even defends the project.)
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
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