I have discovered that the Internet Archive doesn't reliably preserve the code that makes spoilers open and close on the old Wizards forum. Unless this is a quirk unique to my computer, it appears to actually be a significant threat to my efforts to preserve storyline posts from that forum. I keep finding more threads that I want to backup, only to realize that the posts use spoiler tags.

Other than recreating every affected thread on NGA, I'm not really sure what to do here.

I'm looking for any advice or ideas of how to proceed.

Can you link me to an archived example so I can check on my system?

This sucks if this is a cross platform problem

I don't know! I first noticed when I created Archives of the Planeswalker War posts and couldn't open the spoilers. Later when I visited the same captures they did work. Tonight it doesn't work again. (?) Same computer, same browser settings, exact same site capture! I have no clue what's up, if it's all on my end or what.

Some examples of archived threads that have spoilered text:

http://web.archive.org/web/201501210017 ... t-36867251
(two of my posts)

http://web.archive.org/web/201501220200 ... t-43457096

Guild Wars? in the Tome of Flavor:
http://web.archive.org/web/201410201502 ... nt-1846156
http://web.archive.org/web/201410201502 ... nt-1846181

http://web.archive.org/web/201501210022 ... t-38184551
(my comment and Keeper's quote of it)



But calling it a "cross-platform problem" would imply that the Internet Archive is somehow inadequate at preserving every facet of websites that aren't mishmashes of broken and mistyped code. It actually does great on websites that aren't redolent with the odor of a thousand neglected port-a-potties.

Ok so here's a **** workaround that is nevertheless a workaround. If you use Chrome you can use right click and use Inspect Element to basically do an x-ray on the content of spoiler blocks. You have to poke around a little bit to find the text, but it's there--you can pull out the hidden text that way.

Right now I'm clicking on the Altair posts for Guildwars though and it's working for me so I don't know what the hell is going on frankly. Nevertheless, the point is, we can access the information even when it seems like we can't, so it's not lost, just hidden.

ok, I have maybe a slightly less **** workaround for you...

Go to the page with spoilers, open a javascript console (usually F12 on Chrome/Firefox and find the Console tab), paste the following into the prompt, and hit Enter.


It just goes through the page, finds things marked as spoiler content, and changes the display style from "don't show anything" to "show normally". It's super-ugly because i made it as a bookmarklet before realizing the forum strips out that kind of link. At a glance it seems to work on the links you posted.

*vanishes back into the aether*

huh, I didn't know about the "for" stuff. Which I guess is what happens when you teach yourself this stuff piecemeal via google. What do you need that part of the code for?

Thanks Glasir.

Now I'm having an issue with videos and the artwork slideshows on archive.wizards.com. It seems that the Wayback Machine can't archive them at all?