It is customary to periodically archive old discussions on a talk page when that page becomes too large. Bulky talk pages may be hard to navigate, contain obsolete discussion, or become a burden for users with slow Internet connections or computers. Notices are placed at the beginning of the talk page to inform all editors of an archive.
Regular articles are not archived because previous versions may be seen in the page history; the practice of archiving is particular to talk pages and noticeboards, which often swell to great length. Archiving one's own user talk page is optional; some users simply blank the page, as the history is kept available for future reference, but this is not considered the best practice (as it makes things more difficult to find and link). For this specific case, the use of "permalinks" can provide an easy way to display an archived view of a talk page at a given moment, though there's no control on thread organization or presentation.
The talk page guidelines suggest archiving when the talk page exceeds 75 KB (or 75,000 bytes), or has multiple resolved or stale discussions. However, when to archive, and what may be the optimal length for a talk page, are subjective decisions that should be adapted to each case. For example, ongoing discussions and nearby sections they reference should generally be kept intact.
There may be circumstances where it would be useful to keep older discussions present on a talk page, to avoid the same issues being repeatedly raised. However, this situation can be better addressed by use of the {{FAQ}} template.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Subpage archive method
The preferred method for archiving a talk page is to copy the older content to a series of subpages. This can be performed either by hand or automatically by a bot.
There are two common methods of naming archive pages. The most common, and easiest, is sequentially numbered archives. Archive pages should be named as follows: take the name of the talk page, and add "/Archive #", where "#" is the number of the archive. Note that the word Archive has a capital A, there is a space before the number, and there are no leading zeros. Templates like {{Archive list}} rely on this naming convention to automatically find the archive pages.
For example:
- The 20th archive of Talk:Earth would be named
Talk:Earth/Archive 20 - The first archive of User talk:Example user would be named
User talk:Example user/Archive 1
The second common method of naming archive pages is by year and month. With this method archive pages are typically named Talk:YourPage/Archives/2013/June, Talk:YourPage/Archives/2013/July, etc. Some things are more complex with this method of naming. When using this naming scheme the subpages should use /Archives/ not /Archive/ as some of the navigation templates rely on Archives being plural.
Remember to use the correct namespace - the part before the colon (:) - when archiving your own user talk page. It should start with "User talk:", not "Talk:".
Cut and paste procedure
Step-by-step procedure
- Click on the Edit source tab for the talk page you wish to archive.
- In the edit box, highlight all the text you want to archive, right-click (Windows/Linux) or control-click (Mac) and then select cut (also Ctrl+X, ? Cmd+X for Mac). The text will then be copied to your clipboard. Any WikiProject header templates should remain on the main talk page and should not be cut and pasted to an archive page.
- While still in the edit window, make a link to the archive name you plan on creating - you can link directly to a subpage by putting a slash (/) in front of it.
- If you're making a topical archive, use the name of the topic, for example [[
/Place of birth debate]]. - If you're just archiving old discussion, use the next available number; so if the last archive page was Archive 3, call it [[
/Archive 4]]. - If there are no archives yet, call it [[
/Archive 1]]. - Archive links can be conveniently placed in an archive template (How to do this is described in the archive box section below)
- If you're making a topical archive, use the name of the topic, for example [[
- Click Save page. (It's helpful to include an Edit summary like "Archiving old material".) You should now have a page of recent discussion with a red link to your archive at the top.
- Open the newly created subpage by clicking the red link. Paste the old discussions from your clipboard into the edit box.
- Add
{{Talk archive}}to the top and bottom of the page. This adds a notice explaining that the page is an archive, and links back to the main talk page. - If this is a numbered archive, you can add a navigation template to make it easier to navigate through to other numbered archives. See the section navigation templates below.
- Save page. You have now created an archive.
How Do I Delete Archived Messages Video
Options
There are many options for customizing how and when archives are created, and how they are navigated. Some of the more popular ones are detailed below.
Automated archival
ClueBot III and lowercase sigmabot III can automatically create cut-and-paste archives for any discussion page (one that has "talk" in the namespace), by moving sections to a subpage when the section has received no comments for a specified period of time. Both bots can archive sections into simple sequentially numbered archives (e.g. YourPage/Archive 1, YourPage/Archive 2, ...), or archive according to date (e.g. YourPage/Archives/2013/June, YourPage/Archives/2013/July, ...). See the lowercase sigmabot III page and the ClueBot III page for detailed instructions on setting up these bots. The examples below are also available for use. All of the examples here are intended for you to be able to copy them while viewing this page and paste them into the edit box on your target page without requiring any modification to have a working configuration.
ClueBot III also creates an index of your archives. Lowercase sigmabot III requires the use of an additional bot which has also commonly been used with ClueBot III. See #Archive indexing for more information.
ClueBot III can take several days between the time the configuration template is first placed on a page and when archiving begins (example of 4 day delay). Lowercase sigmabot III typically begins archiving new pages the first time the bot runs after the configuration template is placed on the page. Lowercase sigmabot III typically begins runs at 0 UTC daily.
Note: Make sure to establish consensus before setting up lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III on a talk page other than your user talk page.
Example configurations to set up automatic archival of an article talk page or user talk page (you can add one of the following near the top of the page):
In general, you should include {{Archives|auto=yes|search=yes}} (to provide a search box) along with the following:
The configuration template for lowercase sigmabot III is still named {{User:MiszaBot/config}} even though the original bots, MiszaBot I, MiszaBot II, and MiszaBot III, are no longer active.
The best age for threads to be archived will vary, depending on talk page activity. The purpose of archival on article talk pages should be to remove stale discussions, not to stifle discussion. Article talk page threads should not typically be archived in less than 30 days except for very busy talk pages.
The maxarchivesize parameter determines how large each archive is allowed to grow before the a new archive is started. Keeping this value larger than a typical talk page allows the archives to be browsed more easily, but increases page load times. Each individual archive should not be larger than 512kB, because this may cause accessibility problems for some devices. Because a long thread can "overshoot" the maxarchivesize parameter, the parameter should always be set lower than the maximum acceptable archive size.
If the archive page is a numbered archive page ("Archive #" where # is the number of the archive), you can add a navigation template to make it easier to navigate through to other numbered archives.
{{Archive navigation}}needs the archive number as a parameter - for example{{Archive navigation|3}}on Archive 3.{{Archive nav}}similar to the above, but a dynamic list of links, - for example{{Archive nav|33}}on Archive 33.{{Talk archive navigation}}, adds navigation features to the standard notice.{{Talk header}}contains an automatically appearing archive list and archive search box, if numbered archives exist (e.g. /Archive 1, /Archive 2, ...)
Archive boxes
On regularly archived talk pages, it is useful to have an "archive box" template. Common usage is to place the archive box below other header templates and before the first section heading so that the box appears to the right of the table of contents. If the page already has a manual archive box, add the link to the new archive page to it. If there is no archive box yet, you may want to set one up. If you have a very large number of archives (such as Talk:Main Page) you may want to see how that page uses a separate subpage to list the archives.
{{Archives}}
{{Archive box}}
{{Archive box collapsible}}
Automatic archive boxes for numbered archives
All of {{Archives}}, {{Archive box}} and {{Archive box collapsible}} can automatically list links to archives. Automatic archive detection is usually enabled using the auto parameter which can be set to any of: short, long, yes, or no. Automatic archive page detection is usually limited to numbered archives in the format /Archive 1, /Archive 2, etc.). Instructions are on the respective template pages.
One example is {{Archive box|auto=yes}}. It will automatically create an archive box of links to archive pages named /Archive 1, /Archive 2, etc. Archives with other names can be added within the first unnamed parameter.
Instead of an archive box, {{Archive banner}} displays a banner across the page. As with the archive box templates it can have links to the archives (automatic or manual), have an archive search box, be collapsible, etc.
Automatic archive boxes for year/month archives
Automatic archive boxes for Year/Month archives are a bit more complicated.
The above code produces the archive box to the above right. The example here has no month names which are links because there are no archive files for this page. You can, of course, delete the lines for the years you don't want.
The default for the {{Archives by months}} template is that archive page names are in the format YourPage/Archives/2013/June, YourPage/Archives/2013/July, etc. However, {{Archives by months}} allows you to specify various naming conventions for your archives. Archives can have an arbitrary prefix by using the archprefix parameter (e.g. archprefix=Archive/ instead of Archives/). Months can be in four formats: A) the default uses January, February, March, etc.; B) abbrev3=yes months are Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.; C) numbers=yes months are 1, 2, 3, ... 12; D) numbers0=yes months are 01, 02, 03, ... 12.
If you are using ClueBot III, it has a couple of additional options for creating an archive box. These involve the use of either the archivebox or the index parameters. See the ClueBot III page for more information.
Archive indexing
Having an archive index makes finding old discussions on a given topic easier, particularly in pages with many archives, or when the archives are of considerable size. An archive index, when one exists, is typically stored on the page Talk:YourPage/Archive index. While it is possible to generate an index by hand, the /Archive index page is normally generated automatically. There are two bots which automatically create indexes: Legobot and ClueBot III.
Legobot, formerly HBC Archive Indexerbot, can create an archive index page based on a set of archives. See the bot's instructions for details on how to set up archive indexing. Legobot generated archive indexes are the most commonly available type of index. To set up Legobot archiving you need to place:<!-- Legobot can blank this -->
onto your Talk:YourPage/Archive index page. The following is a Legobot configuration that works with numbered archives which you can place on the page you are archiving:
ClueBot III automatically creates an archive index when archiving. ClueBot III stores the archive indexes it creates on unique pages in its user space. The archive index for the page you are archiving can be transcluded onto your Talk:YourPage/Archive index page by putting the following text in that page:{{User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/{{NAMESPACE}}: {{BASEPAGENAME}}}}
Archive searching
If there are several archives, it is easy to search them all at once using the optional search parameter prefix. For example, suppose we want to begin a discussion about adding a security section to the Linux article. Before bringing up the topic we can do the following search: security prefix:Talk:Linux/. This will look in all the subpages of the Linux article in its Talk namespace.
The templates {{Archives}}, {{Archive box}}, and {{Talk header}} have a parameter search=yes which provides a helpful search box on the talk page to automate searching, as do independent search templates such as {{search archives}}. It is recommended that when a page is archived, such a template be put on the surviving talk page to simplify access to past discussions.
Continuing discussions
It is difficult to say exactly when a discussion "ends" and when it is continuing. Given that archived discussions are immutable, archiving a discussion effectively ends that particular discussion. When reopening a discussion is desired, links to archived discussions can be provided in the new discussion thread.
Example pages
Here are actual discussion pages on Wikipedia where you can study the code to see how archive pages were created.
- Talk:Psychokinesis has a simple archive box with a search field.
- Talk:Jesus has a mixture of numbered and topical archives. It also includes a summary of recently archived discussions.
- Talk:Main Page has many numbered archives. The archives are listed on a separate subpage and transcluded.
Other procedures for archiving
Other procedures were once considered equal options with the procedure described above. Over time both methods fell out of use and are generally not used. If you have used the page move procedure those pages do not qualify for speedy deletion by user request.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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