Internet Archive preserves complete index of FiveThirtyEight articles
A newly accessible index tracks every preserved article from fivethirtyeight.com, highlighting the prolific output of founder Nate Silver and over 550 other contributors since 2008.
The Internet Archive has made a comprehensive index of articles from the data journalism website FiveThirtyEight available to the public. The resource, hosted at fivethirtyeightindex.com, provides a searchable database of the site’s historical output, covering content dating back to March 2008. This preservation effort allows researchers and readers to track the statistical analysis and election forecasting content produced by the site over nearly two decades.
The earliest entry in the index is a frequently asked questions page titled "Frequently Asked Questions, Last Revised 8/7/08," authored by Nate Silver on 1 March 2008. Subsequent entries from that initial period include Silver’s "Pollster Ratings v1.0" and various election-related analyses such as "A Reality Check on South Dakota?" and "538 versus Intrade." The archive lists articles by date, headline, and byline, offering a structured view of the site’s early development during its beta testing phase.
Nate Silver remains the most prolific author in the index, with 4,966 articles listed. He is followed by Neil Paine, who contributed 1,428 articles, Walt Hickey with 1,210, and Aaron Bycoffe with 1,168. The index tracks contributions from 558 distinct bylines in total, reflecting the collaborative nature of the data journalism platform.
Other notable figures listed in the archive include Mona Chalabi, Harry Enten, and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux. The full list of contributors also features Galen Druke, Oliver Roeder, Nathaniel Rakich, and Dhrumil Mehta, among others. The content spans years from 2008 through 2025, although the inclusion of the year 2025 in the browse list may indicate auto-generated placeholders rather than actual archived content.
It is unclear if the index is exhaustive or if it represents a specific snapshot of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine data. The accuracy of the article counts per author depends on the completeness of the Internet Archive's preservation of fivethirtyeight.com content. The information regarding this archive was originally highlighted via a feed from Hacker News, a platform often used to share data projects and digital archives.
The preservation of this data provides a significant resource for understanding the evolution of data journalism and statistical forecasting. By making the index accessible, the Internet Archive ensures that the historical record of FiveThirtyEight’s output remains available for future reference, regardless of the current status of the original website.
