How to Support Archiveteam's Archiving Efforts

You can support Archiveteam in four main ways: run the Warrior client to donate bandwidth and computing power, donate money to keep projects running, report sites that are shutting down, and contribute code or coordination through IRC. The right choice depends on what you can offer — a spare machine and bandwidth, money, a tip about an at-risk site, or technical labor.

Archiveteam describes itself as "a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage," active since 2009 and focused on shutdowns, shutoffs, mergers, and deletions. Its wiki is an "offloading point and information depot" for archiving projects and advice on rescuing data.

Run a Warrior to donate bandwidth and compute

The most direct hands-on contribution is running a Warrior. The main page states plainly: "Help us: ☞ Download and run your warrior ☜." This is the entry point for volunteers who want to contribute machine resources rather than money.

What happens when you run it: the Warrior pulls work items for active projects and mirrors data back to the team. Progress is visible on the online tracker linked from the main page, so you can confirm your machine is actually contributing.

A practical example: if you have an always-on home server or an idle desktop with spare disk and bandwidth, running a Warrior turns that idle capacity into archiving work without you choosing targets manually.

One caveat worth knowing: the main page notes a separate Warrior build for machines "that don't have the update to pick a project at random from a weighted list." If your client can't select projects automatically, you may need the Telegram-specific build instead.

Donate to keep projects running

The main page includes a direct ask: "Donate to keep our projects going." This is the option for people who want to support the work without running software or writing code. The site presents donation as one of the core ways to sustain active projects, alongside volunteering compute.

Report at-risk sites and data

Archiveteam finds work through tips. The main page asks: "Anything shutting down? Put it on the Deathwatch or tell us on IRC!" Two channels exist for this:

• Deathwatch — the wiki's listing for sites and services that appear to be shutting down.
• IRC — for direct reports and discussion.

This matters because the team's whole model is reacting to shutdowns, mergers, and deletions. A timely report can be the difference between a site being saved and lost.

Contribute code or coordination

If you want to work on the tooling itself, the main page points to a starting point for coding for Archive Team. Coordination happens on IRC, with project-specific channels listed for each effort.

Current project channels

All channels are on hackint. The main page also lists Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America as medium-term projects, and notes that short-term urgent projects are currently none.

Which option fits you

• Spare machine and bandwidth, no money to give: run a Warrior.
• Want to help without running software: donate.
• Know a site about to disappear: post it on the Deathwatch or report it on IRC.
• Can write code or help coordinate: start with the coding entry point and join the relevant IRC channel.

The main page frames all of this around one message: "IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY." Support can be as small as a tip about a closing site or as involved as maintaining crawler code — the team's structure is built to absorb both.