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Chiebukuro is a site many answers have referenced in the past, and very helpful, but since February 1 2022, it is no longer available in the EEA. This leaves a lot of sources on answers inaccessible to European/UK users (without VPNs); is there anything that can be done about this?

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    Maybe there might be a way to go through and auto-replace all the links to Chiebukuro in posts here with appropriate archive.org links? Do we know if archive.org has indexed it? Jun 21, 2022 at 12:56
  • @DariusJahandarie Sadly it has not, but I have been using a workaround of grabbing the link, archiving it in archive.org, and then using that link. It's a lot to ask every user who links to Chiebukuro, though.
    – Angelos
    Jun 22, 2022 at 5:01
  • I feel like dead links are a general stack exchange issue, I wonder if the SE staff have any automated mechanisms to help with that issue that could be applied here. Jun 22, 2022 at 13:34

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To clarify, we're talking about hundreds of posts (if that query is correct).

Stack Exchange staff has a simple tool to mass-replace links (even without bumping posts!) but all it can do is find and replace, say, chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp with chiebukuro.yahoo.com if that would work.

The workaround you describe, saving the page as a snapshot in the Wayback Machine, and using that link, is something that can be automated. I've got all the parts ready (I have various scripts repairing broken links and images across the network), but it would only suggest edits, which then bump the posts to the front page. It does have configurable rate-limiting. And I need to find another place to run it from, since I'm located in the Netherlands ...

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  • This is awesome, thank you so much for finding this post and replying! Am I understanding correctly that someone on JLSE with 1. edit privileges and 2. access to chiebukuro, would be able to run your scripts to accomplish this? (I'm actually not entirely sure why 2 is required, wouldn't the wayback machine be the thing accessing chiebukuro, not the person running the script?) Jun 23, 2022 at 15:34
  • 2. I feel stupid now, that works at least when I do it manually. 1. you need an access token for the Stack Exchange API which is not straightforward unless you have some programming skills. Then I could try to isolate the necessary parts of my scripts, and that's rather complicated.
    – Glorfindel
    Jun 23, 2022 at 16:43
  • Got it. Is there potentially a way we could ask the SE team to give your API key permission to just make the edit without approval specifically on JLSE? Jun 23, 2022 at 20:16
  • I very much doubt they will do that. The API is one-size-fits-all – exceptions were only made for the (now discontinued) mobile apps and SmokeDetector, which got a higher quota (number of requests per day), not more privileges.
    – Glorfindel
    Jun 24, 2022 at 5:50

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