// CONTRIBUTING.md

Help Us Preserve the Early Web

The 1990 Web Archive thrives on community effort. Whether you're archiving a forgotten GeoCities page, fixing crawl scripts, or documenting HTML3.2 quirks, your contributions keep digital history alive.

Ways to Contribute

📜

Content Archiving

Submit historically significant pages, recover broken links, and preserve multimedia assets.

💻

Code & Infrastructure

Improve crawlers, fix rendering engines, optimize storage, or build archival tools.

📖

Documentation & Metadata

Write curation notes, tag content, maintain taxonomy, and improve search indexing.

🌍

Community & Outreach

Organize preservation drives, host webinars, translate guidelines, and recruit archivists.

Technical Standards

To maintain authenticity and interoperability, all submissions must adhere to our archival standards:

1. Directory Structure

archive/
├── manifest.json
├── 001990-1994/
│   ├── geocities/
│   └── academic/
├── assets/
│   ├── images/  [GIF, early JPEG, BMP]
│   └── audio/   [MIDI, AU, WAV]
└── render/
    └── nexuscape-3.0/ [browser-specific fallbacks]
            

2. Metadata Schema

Every archived site requires a manifest.json at the root:

{
  "title": "My First Homepage",
  "era": "1997",
  "original_url": "http://home.geocities.com/area/123",
  "archivist": "@username",
  "integrity_hash": "sha256:abc123...",
  "notes": "Contains broken MIDI, frameset preserved"
}
            

3. Preservation Rules

Do not modernize markup. Keep <table> layouts, <font> tags, and inline styles exactly as found.
Fix only dead assets. Replace broken src or href only if the original server is permanently offline. Note replacements in metadata.
Preserve context. Include README.md with screenshots, browser render notes, and historical significance.
Copyright awareness. Only archive content under fair use, public domain, or with explicit permission. Remove clearly restricted commercial material.

Submission Workflow

Request Access

Join the contributor Discord or submit a GitHub issue.

Claim a Site

Comment on the archival tracker to avoid duplicate work.

Capture & Clean

Run crawlers, verify assets, generate manifests.

Open PR

Submit to the main branch with full metadata.

Review & Merge

Curators verify authenticity and run integrity checks.

Code of Conduct

🛡️ Community & Archival Ethics

We are preserving digital history, not curating nostalgia for profit. All contributors agree to:

Prioritize historical accuracy over visual polish.
Respect attribution and authorship of original creators.
Refrain from archiving defamatory, illegal, or explicitly harmful content without academic justification and review board approval.
Maintain a respectful, inclusive communication style across all channels.

Violations may result in revoked contributor status. Report concerns to ethics@1990webarchive.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I archive my own personal 90s website?

Absolutely! Personal homepages are highly valued. Just ensure you have the rights to the content and include a brief history note.

What if a page uses outdated scripts (e.g., JS 1.0, VBScript)?

Preserve them as-is in a scripts/ subfolder. Modern browsers won't execute them, but we keep them for research. Document execution requirements in the manifest.

How do you verify authenticity?

We cross-reference Wayback Machine snapshots, Usenet posts, academic citations, and original author statements. Cryptographic hashing ensures files remain unaltered post-submission.

Is there compensation for contributors?

This is a volunteer-driven preservation initiative. However, active archivists receive exclusive contributor badges, early access to research datasets, and recognition in academic publications.

Ready to preserve the past?

Fork the Archive →