# Talk:Anna's Archive

tarnkappe.info/artikel/e-books/z-library-annas-archive-macht-schattenbibliothek-durchsuchbar-259286.html - tarnkappe.info has a page on German Wikipedia - de:tarnkappe.info VintageVernacular (talk) 06:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

 Done at 20 November by Drbogdan – reported by 83.28.217.24 (talk) 02:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Possibly relevant (and useful?) reference from Gigazine News (10 October 2023) - iac - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 16:50, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done at 10 January by Drbogdan – reported by 83.28.217.24 (talk) 02:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Anna's Archive/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Nominator: BruschettaFan (talk · contribs) 16:50, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Reviewer: Kovcszaln6 (talk · contribs) 12:41, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I will be reviewing this article within the next few days. This is my first time reviewing a GAN, so please excuse my mistakes. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 12:41, 9 February 2025 (UTC)


### Criteria
### Review
Well-written:

Verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check:

Broad in its coverage:

Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.

Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:


#### Result
#### Discussion
Noting this for future reference - the German "Lexikon der Informatik, Datenverarbeitung und Kryptographie (HC)" has an entry on AA on pg. 33-34. I'm not sure whether it would be worth citing because it doesn't mention anything not covered here but it could demonstrate notability. BruschettaFan (talk) 06:03, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

It seems like this Ars Technica article is wrong to say that Anna's Archive was part of Books3 -- other reporting describes Books3 as simply derived from Bibliotik, and to the best of my knowledge, Anna's Archive was only named in the legal proceedings as an example of a "shadow library". Is it still worth mentioning that Nvidia explicitly defended Anna's Archive alongside other shadow libraries or should the section be removed altogether? BruschettaFan (talk) 16:46, 31 March 2025 (UTC)


### Anna's Archive
Listed for peer review because I'm considering attempting to bring it to FAC (first time!). I'm fairly confident in the sourcing and comprehensiveness but feedback on organization, prose etc. would be especially appreciated.
Thanks, BruschettaFan (talk) 11:23, 17 July 2025 (UTC)


#### RoySmith
The hot topic these days is sourcing so (despite the request to concentrate on the prose), I'll mostly stick to sourcing.  Since this will be your first FAC, starting here at PR was a good move, and I recommend that after this you move onto WP:GAN to get another round of review.

TorrentFreak is a blog, and thus unlikely to be accepted as a WP:RS.  You've used them for almost half of your citations.  I'm afraid that's going to exceptionally hard to sell at WP:FAC.
It's not clear to me where TNW falls.  I see [Next Web for ProProfs] which is mostly positive, but I suspect you will still get some pushback at FAC about the quality of that source.
London Review of Books appears to be a WP:RS in general, but you are using something from a blog they run, so that's probably not a RS.
Per WP:VICE, There is no consensus on the reliability of Vice Media publications.  Not encouraging.
I don't have a good feel for walledculture.org, but my first impression is that it's more of a blog than a RS.
Well, those are the sourcing problems that stand out to me on a quick look.  Overall, the elphant in the room is TorrentFreak.  I just don't see any way that's going to be accepted as a WP:RS at FAC, and given that so much of your article is sourced to them, unfortunately I think you've got your work cut out for you to find better sourcing.  RoySmith (talk) 00:31, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

The Walled Culture source was also republished on Techdirt (a blog, but apparently a fairly well-respected one for tech news) and the author seems independently credible as a tech writer. If citing TorrentFreak is an issue I don't think there's really any acceptable replacement because there's no other source with an equivalent breadth of coverage. Most of the information they have isn't available anywhere else. BruschettaFan (talk) 00:40, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Per perennial sources "most editors consider TorrentFreak generally reliable on topics involving file sharing". In general this is a fairly niche topic without much coverage so TorrentFreak can't be removed without excising most of the article. BruschettaFan (talk) 00:43, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Reading the various RSN discussions, I come away with the impression that it's a bit of a grey area.  I do note that this thread says "There shouldn't be a problem with using articles from TorrentFreak on a limited basis and with limited weight".  You are using them as the (by far) most used source in your article.  I really think you're going to have a lot of trouble with this at FAC. RoySmith (talk) 01:04, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Yeah in that case FA might be infeasible, at least until better sources are available. Thank you for your help! BruschettaFan (talk) 04:25, 23 July 2025 (UTC)


#### Query from Z1720
@BruschettaFan: It has been over a month since the last comment: are you still looking for comments, or can this be closed and nominated to WP:FAC? Z1720 (talk) 21:20, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

Close it without nominating please. BruschettaFan (talk) 03:20, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

The site admin offering payments for editing this article, however no one declared they're getting paid.
See https://software.annas-archive.li/AnnaArchivist/annas-archive/-/issues/250 Throat0390 (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

@Throat0390: Are there any parts of the article that are problematic? If not, then I see no point of the banner in the article. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 13:57, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
I didn't review the article, I added because no disclosed their paid editing. This isn't compliant with Wikipedia's policies. If this isn't enough to template then it can be removed(?) Throat0390 (talk) 20:37, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
The only potentially dodgy edit I can see is 8 June, since the post asked people to add from their website, but it seems to have been an improvement. I’ll give them a warning Kowal2701 (talk) 20:52, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
Someone else may want to look through the article history (the post was made around January/February IIRC, page isn’t loading for me anymore), if there’s nothing more then the tag can probably be removed Kowal2701 (talk) 20:58, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
They also said Any edits that will get reverted will result in the membership being cancelled. Please only make edits in accordance with Wikipedia policies., despite not realising the whole endeavour was against Wikipedia policies Kowal2701 (talk) 09:33, 5 September 2025 (UTC)
AFAIK it should be fine as long as the paid contributors are disclosed the connection but in this case not. Throat0390 (talk) 20:34, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
This one was written almost entirely by BruschettaFan, who started work on it well before that post. It appears to be translations into other wikis that got paid. Kowal2701 (talk) 09:41, 5 September 2025 (UTC)
I had a small part in writing this article, but I have not been – and have never intended to be – paid for it, nor for any edit in any article. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 12:37, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Our article claims "As of July 2025, Anna's Archive includes 52,875,045 books and 98,598,895 papers". I don't see this number or anything similar at [1]. It says "We estimate that we have preserved about 5% of the world’s books", and this sentnece links to their 2022 blog [2] which provides an estimates for 11,783,153 files. Where do the more recent books and papers estimate come from? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

The number came from the top banner text (the sentences just below the logo) here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250801212845/https://annas-archive.li/faq
Wikipedian-in-Waiting (talk) 13:56, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
@Wikipedian-in-Waiting Fair. But why two months later - i.e. now - the numbers they report are 10 times SMALLER? I see now " 4,467,402 books, 8,439,181 papers"... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:41, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
It happens with all their domains (.li, .org, .se) — every time you refresh the page, you get one of about 3 or 4 very different numbers. For example, right now at https://annas-archive.org, the banner says 53,622,165 books. Refresh the page, and it's 4,467,402 books. Refresh a third time and it's 17,874,111 books. Fourth time, back to the 4 million number. Fifth time, 40,215,069 books. Sixth, back to the 4 million number again....
Maybe it is a caching issue?
Wikipedian-in-Waiting (talk) 02:49, 5 October 2025 (UTC)
@Wikipedian-in-Waiting Wow. That's wild. Have you tried emailing them and asking about this? I recently emailed them about another topic and they got back to me quickly. If the numbers jump around so much, maybe we should use some kind of range rather than citing one datapoint? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:35, 5 October 2025 (UTC)
I haven't contacted them. Perhaps another reference is here: https://annas-archive.org/blog/worldcat-editions-and-holdings.html
'...there are 53M books distributed in our torrents...'
That backs up the number that initially shows on their website banner text (53,622,165 books) and the one that was cited in the wiki article. Perhaps also providing archived links to both would be beneficial:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20251004145136/https://annas-archive.org/blog/worldcat-editions-and-holdings.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250801212845/https://annas-archive.li/faq
Wikipedian-in-Waiting (talk) 17:12, 5 October 2025 (UTC)
@Wikipedian-in-Waiting Yes, that's good, I think we can use number 53m for books at that time. What about "other papers"? Any reliable estimate for these? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:19, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
@Piotrus I think if we accept that the number of books listed on their banner is correct, then by the same logic we should accept their number of papers. Right now the banner says 53,622,165 books and 101,300,806 papers. Here's an archived link that could be used in the citation: https://web.archive.org/web/20251006171109/https://annas-archive.org/
I also feel the number for papers is valid because it's in line with what others have been reporting over time. For example:
A Dec. 2023 lawsuit by the Italian Publishers Association said in their complaint that there are "nearly 100 million" scholarly articles. (https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/annas-archive-blocked-following-publishers-protest-over-piracy-accusations)
An Oct. 2023 article in TorrentFreak has a screenshot of their banner from then and it shows 97,847,479 papers (https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-scraped-worldcat-to-help-preserve-all-books-in-the-world-231003/)
In Dec. 2022, London Review of Books noted the end of Z-Library, which had 84 million papers... that are now part of Anna's Archive. (https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/december/in-the-shadow-library)
What are your thoughts?
Wikipedian-in-Waiting (talk) 19:56, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
@Wikipedian-in-Waiting These other sources are probably getting their data from AA. Which would be fine, I am just still puzzled by why sometimes they report much smaller numbers. I think the only way to be sure is to email them and see what they say. Emails are not RS but they'll justify treating other sources you mentioned here as RS. I recently emailed them myself and got a reply within 24h so it seems they are not very busy. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:59, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
@Piotrus, I'm curious about what you learned....
Wikipedian-in-Waiting (talk) 12:12, 11 October 2025 (UTC)
@Piotrus, it looks like Anna's Archive fixed whatever issue they had with the display of number of books and papers, if you'd like to update the text and revisit your "failed verification" flag. As of today, for me at least, it shows the same number even when refreshed: 59,467,170 books and 95,525,430 papers. Wikipedian-in-Waiting (talk) 11:35, 20 October 2025 (UTC)