iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Travis Reid

Michael L. Nelson @phonedudemln.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

2026 WS-DL Research Expo Tuesday, June 23, 2pm EDT All are welcome: members, alumni, friends, etc. github.com/oduwsdl/2026... 5 students, 1 from each @webscidl.bsky.social prof, will give a ~15 min summary of their current research. Status updates from profs & alumni too! (zoom link in repo)

github.com

GitHub - oduwsdl/2026-research-expo: 2026 ODU Web Science and Digital Libraries (WSDL) Research Expo

2026 ODU Web Science and Digital Libraries (WSDL) Research Expo - oduwsdl/2026-research-expo

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Reposted by Travis Reid

himarshaj.bsky.social @himarshaj.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Excited to share that I passed my PhD proposal defense on April 24, 2026 -- another step closer to finishing my PhD 🎓 Special thanks to my dissertation committee: @weiglemc.bsky.social, @phonedudemln.bsky.social, @acnwala.bsky.social, & Erika Frydenlund for their guidance & support.

slideshare.net

Client Challenge

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Reposted by Travis Reid

Michael L. Nelson @phonedudemln.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Recently, Sawood (ibnesayeed.bsky.social) & I uncovered a tricky web archiving replay problem. An API call several layers of JS deep had superfluous browser size args that would intermittently load the wrong JSON for the archived HTML ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/05/2026... (all images/links are SFW)

ws-dl.blogspot.com

2026-05-26: URL Arguments in API Calls Can Cause Intermittent Temporal Violations While Replaying Archived Web Pages

The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

They also described how Browsertrix assists with quality assurance by allowing users to rate the quality of archived web pages and by computing 3 metrics, which involve comparing extracted text, counts of HTTP status codes for resources, and screenshots during crawl and replay.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

In this paper, they discussed the features of multiple @webrecorder.net tools. Browsertrix is their web archiving platform that uses Browsertrix Crawler for archiving web pages, ArchiveWeb.page for patching web pages, & ReplayWeb.page to replay archived resources.

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Reposted by Travis Reid

Lesley Frew @lesleyelisabeth.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

In "Detecting and reconstructing trustworthy edit histories using web archives", I talk about different markers of edit history on webpages and how web archives can be used to verify or refute them. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/02/2026... @webscidl.bsky.social

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

5) Successful replay of ads loaded in iframes with the src attribute of "about:blank" depended upon a given browser's service worker implementation. A Chromium bug stopped service workers from accessing resources inside of this type of iframe, which prevented replay. (9/9)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

4) When loading Flashtalking web page ads outside of ad iframes, the ad script requested a non-existent URL, which prevented the replay of ad resources. (8/9)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

3) During crawling and replay sessions, Google's and Amazon's ad scripts generated URLs with different random values, because the random number generator’s seed is not the same during the crawl and replay sessions. This prevented archived ads' replay. (7/9)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

1) Before August 2023, Internet Archive's Save Page Now (SPN) excluded ad services' ads & URLs with ad related file and directory names. In April 2025, a new option, "Disable ad blocker," was introduced in SPN, allowing logged-in users to archive ads. (5/9)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Five problems with archiving & replaying ads during 2023: 1. IA's Save Page Now excluded ads 2. Brozzler's incompatibility with Chrome 3. Google & Amazon ad URLs with random values 4. Flashtalking ads requested unarchived URL 5. Replay of ads differed depending on browser (4/9)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

We created a dataset of 279 ads by archiving 17 web pages from SimilarWeb’s top websites worldwide. Dataset of 279 archived ads: github.com/savingads/Re... We also created a web page to display ads from our dataset: savingads.github.io/themed_ad_co... (3/9)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

We also published a blog post on Information Matters, which provides a summary of our process for creating a dataset of 279 archived web ads and the problems we identified while archiving and replaying these ads. (2/9) #WebArchiveWednesday @webscidl.bsky.social informationmatters.org/2025/12/prob...

informationmatters.org

Problems With Archiving and Replaying Web Advertisements - Information Matters

Advertisements are an integral part of our cultural heritage, and this extends to online web advertisements. Unlike print ads, web ads are dynamic and interactive, which makes them difficult to archiv...

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Our JASIST article, "Problems with archiving and replaying current web advertisements", was recently published: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... @wiley.com Co-authors: Alex Poole, Hyung Wook Choi, Christopher Rauch, @machawk1.bsky.social, @phonedudemln.bsky.social, @weiglemc.bsky.social (1/9)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Goel et al.’s crawler (Jawa) removes some non-deterministic JavaScript code so that the replay of an archived web page does not change if different users replay it. Removing this code resulted in storage savings of 41% and improved the crawling throughput by 39%.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

While working on the Saving Ads project, we encountered similar problems that involved JavaScript code generating URLs with random values that differed during crawl time and replay time. A Google SafeFrame URL is an example where a random value in the URL caused a replay problem.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

When non-determinism causes variance in resources’ URLs it results in failed requests, which prevents resources from loading. Goel et al. matched a requested URL with a crawled URL by removing the query string (querystrip) and using Levenshtein distance (fuzzy matching).

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Sources of non-determinism identified by Goel et al: > Server-side state > Client side state > Client characteristics > JavaScript's Date, Random, and Performance APIs

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

In this blog post, I summarized Goel et al.’s "Jawa: Web Archival in the Era of JavaScript". They identified sources of non-determinism that cause replay problems and created a crawler that removes non-deterministic code. #WebArchiveWednesday @webscidl.bsky.social ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/06/2025...

ws-dl.blogspot.com

2025-06-11: Paper Summary: "Jawa: Web Archival in the Era of JavaScript" (Goel et al. OSDI '22)

The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

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Reposted by Travis Reid

Michele Weigle @weiglemc.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

This semester, all of my federal grants were terminated. In a new blog post, I write about the importance of federal funding for academic research and the impact of these cuts. @WebSciDL #NEH #IMLS #NSF ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/05/2025...

ws-dl.blogspot.com

2025-05-08: Thank you to NEH, IMLS, DoD Minerva, and NSF

The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Our tech report provides additional details not covered in the blog posts: bsky.app/profile/trei... (7/7)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

To learn more about the replay problems identified while creating this dataset you can read this blog post: ws-dl.blogspot.com/2024/12/2024... (6/7)

ws-dl.blogspot.com

2024-12-04: Problems With Replaying Ads That Use iframes

The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

We also created a web page that allows us to view all of the information from the dataset including the replay of the archived ads: savingads.github.io/themed_ad_co... (5/7)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

To identify ads that were not able to replay in the containing web page that loaded the ads during the crawling session, we used ReplayWeb.page’s URL search feature (replayweb.page/docs/user-guide/exploring/) and our Display Archived Ads tool (github.com/savingads/Display-Archived-Ads). (4/7)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

When archiving these web pages, we utilized: > Web archiving services >> Internet Archive's Save Page Now >> Arquivo.pt >> archive.today >> Conifer > Browser-based tools >> ArchiveWeb.page >> Browsertrix Crawler >> Brozzler (3/7)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Our dataset of 279 ads was created by archiving 17 web pages from SimilarWeb's top websites worldwide. Dataset: github.com/savingads/Re... (2/7)

github.com

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

One of the goals for the Saving Ads project was to create a dataset of advertisements from the live web. This blog post describes our process for creating this dataset: ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/02/2025... #WebArchiveWednesday @webscidl.bsky.social (1/7)

ws-dl.blogspot.com

2025-02-10: Creating a Dataset of Archived Web Ads

The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

We were able to create a dataset of 279 ads by archiving 17 web pages from SimilarWeb’s top websites worldwide. Dataset of 279 archived ads: github.com/savingads/Re... We also created a web page to display ads from our dataset: savingads.github.io/themed_ad_co... (10/10)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

To identify ads that were not able to replay in the containing web page that loaded the ads during the crawling session, we used ReplayWeb.page’s URL search feature (replayweb.page/docs/user-guide/exploring) and our Display Archived Ads tool (github.com/savingads/Display-Archived-Ads). (9/10)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

4) When loading Flashtalking web page ads outside of ad iframes, the ad script requested a non-existent URL, which prevented the replay of ad resources. (7/10)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

We created an example web page that used ad code from Google’s pubads_impl_2023020201.js script to determine how the random values were generated for a Google SafeFrame. Demo web page for generating random numbers and Google SafeFrames: treid003.github.io/random_Value... (6/10)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

2) During 2023, Brozzler was incompatible with versions of Chrome released after version 111.0.5563.110, which prevented ads from being archived. This thread describes the problem: x.com/TReid803/sta... (4/10)

x.com

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

1) Before August 2023, Internet Archive's Save Page Now (SPN) excluded ad services' ads & URLs with ad related file and directory names. After August 2023, SPN still excluded ads loaded on a web page & only allowed ad resources if the user directly archived the ad's URL(s) (3/10)

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

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Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Our new tech report (arxiv.org/abs/2502.01525): "Archiving and Replaying Current Web Advertisements…" describes the archiving and replay problems we encountered while creating a dataset of 279 archived ads. #WebArchiveWednesday @webscidl.bsky.social @machawk1 @phonedudemln @weiglemc (1/10)

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