Found a way to archive deleted subreddits before they vanish

Three weeks ago a sub I was in got shut down overnight with no warning. The mods didn't back anything up and all those discussions just disappeared. I started digging around and found a trick using the Wayback Machine's save page now feature. You can manually feed it a subreddit URL like reddit.com/r/subname and it will grab whatever is currently public. I set up a bookmarklet to do this every Sunday for the smaller communities I follow. It's not perfect since it misses deleted comments but at least the main threads stick around. Has anyone else tried this or found a better way to grab content before a group goes dark?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor2193d ago

Wayback Machine's save page now feature" yeah Ive tried that before. It works okay for the main page but half the time the actual threads dont load right or the formatting is all jacked up. Plus how often do subs really just vanish out of nowhere? I get that people get attached to their corners of Reddit but is it REALLY that big of a deal if a few old posts about funny cat pictures or gaming memes disappear? Seems like a lot of effort for something that barely matters in the long run.

alex5242d ago

Yeah the formatting on archived threads is terrible, I tried saving a few weeks ago and half the comments just showed up as raw HTML code. And honestly I agree with you, most of this stuff is just old memes and random chatter nobody will ever look at again.