I was thinking a little more about folk authorship as it appears on the Internet, where it seems most changes are additive -- comments tacked on at the bottom of the page, blog posts marching across pages of archives, blogrolls swelling in length.

But maybe the most significant way that the Internet changes is simply that pages disappear -- whether the author takes them down deliberately, or (as in my own case) the author moves, and takes on a new URL as a sign of a new affiliation.

As a compromise between chaos and fixity, I like the idea of saving old versions of texts. I like the idea, but I'm too lazy to bother saving versions of my own texts. Well, shortly before each major site-wide change I make a copy of the whole website... but the chance of anyone out there actually needing a particular version of one of my pages is probably insignificant.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to ping The Wayback Machine, to ask it to archive a particular page for posterity?

(Checks Google.)

Lo and behold... if you use the Alexa toolbar or you click on "Show Related Links" (MS Internet Explorer), the Wayback Machine will check the site within a few days and the archive will appear six months later.