Summary
Dead links are inevitable if your written content lives long enough online. Include archive links alongside links to off-domain content “(a)”.
Thoughts
I like the idea of including an archive link when linking to off-domain content. It seems like something that one could automate via a presubmit step of the publishing process. I’ve looked around but haven’t found an addon/extension for any of the popular blogging solutions which provides an easy way to include such links. I expect that I won’t bother to include them so long as I would have to include them manually. The URL to the off-domain content will be present and determined readers will be able to consult archive.org/etc on their own to achieve the same result.
I also notice that the author includes (sometimes long) relevant quotes from links they cite (a). I think this is a fantastic practice which accomplishes most of the goal of “(a)”.
Notes
For a while now, I’ve been using “(a)” notation to denote archived versions of linked pages. This is a small effort towards creating Long Content (a) (a) – content that has a lifespan of decades or centuries, rather than months or years.
I think basically anyone whose writing includes links to other work should include archived links alongside the original hyperlinks, if the writing is intended to be long-lived. (And if you’re not trying to write long-lived content, what are you doing, even?)
I was happy to see Zuck (a) (a (a)) & Guzey (a) (a) using “(a)” notation in some of their recent work. Perhaps “(a)” will catch on!