Format Obsolescence Watchlist Risk Score Rater
Rate preservation format obsolescence risk on a capped 0-100 scale (two points per year since release plus twenty for proprietary formats, twenty-five when emulation is required and fifteen when validation tooling is lacking) with low, moderate, high and critical tiers.
Description
Apply a transparent local watchlist heuristic to format age, proprietary status, emulation dependence, and validation-tool availability.
Rate preservation format obsolescence risk on a capped 0-100 scale (two points per year since release plus twenty for proprietary formats, twenty-five when emulation is required and fifteen when validation tooling is lacking) with low, moderate, high and critical tiers.
When to use Format Obsolescence Watchlist Risk Score Rater
- Apply a transparent local watchlist heuristic to format age, proprietary status, emulation dependence, and validation-tool availability.
- Apply the same explicit rule consistently during ingest, quality control, reporting, or preservation planning.
- Expose records that need human review without silently rewriting the source data.
How the calculation works
Age alone adds two points per year, so the score measures this explicit policy rather than empirical obsolescence probability.1
risk = min[100, 2·age + 20·proprietary + 25·emulation + 15·no validator] Interpreting the result
Age alone adds two points per year, so the score measures this explicit policy rather than empirical obsolescence probability.
Limitations and assumptions
- The weights and tier cutoffs are illustrative, not a standard; adoption, documentation, software support, patents, and organizational capability need separate assessment.
- Preserve the original value and record the rule version when using this result in an archival workflow.
References
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Digital preservation — Wikipedia contributors
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