Help:Archiving a talk page: Difference between revisions

It is customary to periodically '''archive old discussions on a talk page''' when that page becomes too large. Bulky [[Help:Using talk pages|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.

 

 

The [[Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#When to archive pages|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.

:<code><nowiki>Special:PrefixIndex/</nowiki>''Talk:Pagename''</code>

For example

 

== Manual archiving ==

|-

! style=text-align:left; | Number of talk pages in use on

|-

! style=text-align:left; | Index of archives?

The following are example configurations to set up automatic archiving of an article talk page or user talk page. These configuration templates do not produce any visible output, so you should generally also include [[#For talk pages|a template]] such as {{tlx|Archives}} to provide readers with links to search and navigate the archives. These templates may also be configured with the parameters <code>bot</code> and <code>age</code> to include a message notifying readers that automatic archiving is taking place. For example: {{tlc|Archives|age{{=}}90|bot{{=}}[[User:ClueBot III#How to archive your page|ClueBot III]]}}.

 

 

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="2" | Sequentially numbered archives

|-

|- style="vertical-align:top;"

| <!-- This is intended to be able to be copied while you are viewing the page, not while editing. --><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">

{{anchor|FULLPAGENAME}}Warning: the magic word '''<nowiki>{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}</nowiki>''' is replaced by the talk page name when the template is saved to a talk page. However some punctuation characters that can appear in a page name (<code>"&'</code>) are replaced by HTML character codes that are not recognised by the bots (see [[:mediawikiwiki:Manual:PAGENAMEE encoding#PAGENAME]] for details about these and other characters). For example <code>'</code> is replaced with <code>&#39&#59;</code> (so if the bot is to work then <code>&#39&#59;</code> must be replaced with <code>'</code>). This can be circumvented by using <code><nowiki>{{SUBST:#titleparts:{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}}}</nowiki></code> to automatically sort the encoding.

 

{| class="wikitable"

|-

 

[[User:ClueBot III|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 [[WP:TRANS|transcluded]] onto your <code>Talk:YourPage/Archive index</code> page by putting the following text in that page:<br />

 

== Archive searching ==

* [[Wikipedia:Closing discussions]]

* [[Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages]]

* Pages that need archiving

** [[:Category:Archive requests|Category Archive requests]] is populated by the {{Tl|Archiveme}} template.