Is there a preferred method/format for replacing broken links with links to archived copies?

Question

Is there a preferred method/format for replacing broken links with links to archived copies.

I was viewing this question: Get id of div from its class name

and found this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6773767

I tried clicking on the (justswell.org) link near the end of the answer, and found the content of the linked page is gone, and the domain is "parked" and indicates it is "for sale".

I found that the page is archived on archive.org (Wayback Machine) so I edited the answer to include the link to the archived page. (At this time, my edit has just now been approved).

To add the archive link, I left the original link intact, but added "strikeout" tags surrounding it, and added the archive.org link following the original link.

The result is pretty ugly, so I'm wondering if it's okay as I did it, or if there is a better/preferred way to do it?

Answer 1

First of all, thanks for fixing the link. Not everybody on the Internet knows of the existing of the Wayback Machine, so this is definitely useful. Incidentally, this is why Stack Exchange answers (and questions) may never depend on an external link; those might be useful for further reference but the essence of the answer should be in the post itself. See also Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

You'll note that the Wayback Machine URLs already include the original URL at the end: http://web.archive.org/web/20130910163544/http://blog.justswell.org/clientside-getelementsbyclassname-cross-browser-implementation/, so there's no need to leave the original link in the post; that's rather messy. I would rather opt for providing a link description like this:

Therefore if you are not supporting these browsers then you can use them else you would need a wrapper js function like one mentioned in this blog post originally found on justswell.org.

Note that if people are interested in how the previous versions of the post looked like, they can always check the revision history (by clicking on the 'edited x minutes/hours ago' link underneath the post); that's another reason why strikeout is generally only used by fools like me for irony.