CONTRIBUTION_POLICY.TXT
Guidelines for submitting historical web content to the 1990 Web Archive. Help us preserve the digital heritage of the early internet era.
// Mission Statement
1990 Web Archive is dedicated to preserving the fragile digital artifacts of the World Wide Web's formative years (1990–1999). We rely on community contributions, digital archaeologists, and nostalgic web pioneers to help us capture forgotten GeoCities homepages, early dot-com portals, fan sites, and experimental HTML pages before they are lost forever.
By contributing to this archive, you help ensure that future generations can study, experience, and appreciate the raw, creative, and unpolished spirit of the early web.
01. Acceptable Content
✓ Archivable Assets
- Personal homepages (GeoCities, Tripod, Angelfire, etc.)
- Early e-commerce and dot-com business sites
- Digital zines, fan fiction archives, and fan sites
- WebRings, link farms, and early community portals
- Government and educational .edu/.gov snapshots
- Software download sites and shareware pages
- Guestbooks, hit counter pages, and under-construction templates
- WARC files, MHTML archives, or complete site dumps
⚠ Restricted / Conditional
- Content with unclear copyright status (requires DMCA clearance)
- Sites containing embedded media larger than 50MB
- Pages relying on deprecated plugins (Flash, Java applets) without preservation notes
- Content that may violate regional data privacy laws
We do not archive content that is illegal, promotes hate speech, contains malware or exploit code, or infringes on copyright without permission. All submissions are reviewed by our moderation team before being added to the public index. Suspicious files are quarantined and scanned.
02. How to Submit
You can contribute content via our web interface or using our CLI tool. We support multiple formats to ensure maximum fidelity.
Supported Formats
For large collections, we recommend packaging your archive as a WARC file or a structured ZIP with a manifest.txt describing the content provenance.
03. Legal & Ethics
Copyright Compliance
Contributors warrant that they have the right to submit the content or that the content falls under fair use/archival exemption. If you are submitting someone else's work, please include a note explaining the context and any permissions obtained.
1990 Web Archive reserves the right to remove content upon valid DMCA notice. We maintain a dedicated email for rights holders: legal@1990webarchive.org
Data Integrity
We do not modify the HTML, CSS, or assets of submitted content. Archives are stored in their original state. Rendering may be done using period-accurate browsers (Netscape Navigator 4.0, IE 5.5) to ensure authenticity.
Attribution
All submissions are credited to the contributor in the archive metadata. You can request anonymity if preferred. Original author attribution is preserved where identifiable.
READY TO CONTRIBUTE?
Have a digital time capsule from the 90s? Help us add it to the permanent record.
04. Contact
Questions about this policy or need help preparing your archive? Reach out to our curation team.
Email: curate@1990webarchive.org
PGP Key: Fingerprint: 9040 1BEE 1990 WEB ARC
Response Time: 24–48 hours