How to reference a URL?

Unlike books, which may be torn, lost, given to another person without you ever remembering about it, URLs die in a different way: they stop opening. Or entirely different content is being loaded instead of what the URL once contained. Just like we humans, URLs are mortal

Despite that, we still want to reference URLs like we reference our books, in a nice list at the end of the text. This almost works well with books because many instances of a book are typically printed. For a URL, it is common to be served by a VM on a cheap VPS server, and the owner might just one day think "well I don't really want to keep my server running, so why don't I shut it down to save me a $2/mo.?"

So whenever you reference a URL:

  1. Download the page and save it somewhere, your vault of downloaded pages for future reference. What are you saying? How come you still don't have a repository for downloaded webpages? Where are you storing them, in your head?
  2. I suggest archiving in MHTML format. Brave, a web browser, can do that, and so can Chrome an Safari, I thinkg?..

    3. Did you know that MHTML files can be safely sent over email as plain text? That's why I like to call it "Mail HTML". I erronously read MHTML all the time as "Meta HTML", which is not →. If you want to invent a format that you want to call "Meta HTML", I suggest abbreviating it as μHTML, with an italicized μ, of course. That will earn you 100 bonus points from me

  3. Now, of course, you can't just put your archived page online. Not in the WWW highly influenced by WV which assign high morality score to the act of not giving you copy rights. But at least consider archiving it using a Wayback Machine, and whenever you reference a URL, put a link to a Wayback Machine archived version near it as well: people will be grateful when the URL dies

Now, after reading this, you've become a URL referencing expert, my dear reader, so go and reference with care, teaching this knowledge to others along the way