Help:Archiving a Talk Page

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. There may be circumstances where it would benefit discussions to keep older sections visible on the talk pages; namely, to allow newly visiting editors to see which issues have been addressed already and avoid redundant discussion. Notices should also be 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 history tab; 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. 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. See below for more details.

The talk page guidelines suggest archiving when the talk page exceeds 50 KB or has more than 10 main topics. 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.

When archiving by creating subpages there are two different procedures that can be used: cutting and pasting the content, or moving the page. Cutting and pasting, which retains the talk page history in a single location, is generally preferred. It is helpful to label archives with dates and a brief summary of the main discussions.

Also consider discussions before archiving.

Subpage archive method
Using a subpage is the most popular method for archiving a talk page. There are two alternative procedures which can be used to create a subpage: Cut and paste or move. Whichever way you prefer, you should generally stick to one procedure or the other on any given page, since mixing the two may cause confusion.

Archive pages should be named as follows: take the name of the talk page, and add '/Archive #', where '#' is the number of the archive.

For example:


 * the 20th archive of Talk:England would be named Talk:England/Archive 20
 * the first archive of User talk:Example user would be named User talk:Example user/Archive 1

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

 * 1) Click on edit this page for the talk page you wish to archive.
 * 2) In the edit box, highlight all the text you want to archive, right-click (Windows/Linux) or control-click (Mac) and then select cut. The text will then be copied to your clipboard. Note that any WikiProject header templates should remain on the main talk page and should not be cut and pasted to an archive page.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) *If you're making a topical archive, use the name of the topic, for example  /Place of birth debate .
 * 5) *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 </tt>.
 * 6) *If there are no archives yet, call it  /Archive 1 </tt>.
 * 7) *Archive links can be conveniently placed in an archive template (How to do this is described in the archive box section below)
 * 8) Save the page. You should now have a page of recent discussion with a red link to your archive at the top.
 * 9) Open the newly created subpage by clicking the red link. Paste the old discussions from your clipboard into the edit box.
 * 10) Add talkarchive</tt> 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.
 * 11) 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.
 * 12) Save. You have now created an archive.

A collapsible and searchable system
Use Archive banner to make the links from your main talk page collapsible and also have a searchbox that will search your archives.

Advantages of cut and paste

 * Discussions can be archived by topic, rather than chronologically. This may be appropriate on talk pages where certain topics have a tendency to come up again and again, and it is convenient to have all past discussion on an issue in one location. Archiving by topic is usually less appropriate for personal user talk pages.
 * Unlike the permanent link archiving method, the archive can be edited for clarity. For instance, headers can be renamed to be more helpful, unsigned comments can be noted, irrelevant comments can be moved to a more appropriate place, chit chat can be removed, etc. (However, this kind of editing might be considered a mild form of refactoring.)
 * The links used throughout the discussions remain indexed within Wikipedia. This may also be a disadvantage, as 'what links here' is often clogged with archives and user talk pages.
 * Editors who have the article on their watchlist will not have the archived talk page put on their watchlist, which happens when talk pages are archived by moving them.
 * Unlike the move procedure it does not reset the history of the page.

Disadvantages of cut and paste

 * Unlike the permanent link archiving method, new users may accidentally reply to inactive discussions, and the page is open to vandalism.
 * This method assumes good faith edits by the person creating the archive. When that trust breaks down, without the edit history on the archive page, it can be very complicated to prove that the archive is a genuine copy of the information being archived from the current talk page. Example.
 * Unlike the move procedure archives are not automatically added to the watchlists of the editors already watching the main discussion page.

Move procedure

 * 1) Subpage archives can also be created by moving the talk page to a subpage.
 * 2) Add talkarchive</tt> to the top and bottom of the archived page. This adds a notice explaining that the page is an archive, and links back to the main talk page.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) Alter the redirect link on the now empty talk page into an ordinary link so that the Archive can be found by clicking on the link. It is probably best to place the link into an archive template (How to do this is described in the archive box section below).
 * 5) Cut and paste any WikiProject header templates from the archive page back to the new talk page.
 * 6) Copy discussions that are still active back to the original talk page. If the active discussions are large, as an alternative, copy the section headers of the active discussions onto the new page and provide a link to the same section in the archive eg:



Advantages and disadvantages of the move procedure
This method moves the page history, making user contributions displayed as being to the archive page rather than the original page, and makes it difficult to search for past edits to the talk page by a certain user. On the other hand, clicking the history tab always gives the history of the current page and the current page only, which makes it easier to get diffs from archives. Moving the history to the archive makes it easier to prove that the archive is a true copy of the talk page as of the moment it was archived, though it allows the potential for losing or tampering with comments when active discussions are moved back to the main talk page after the move.

Navigation templates
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-nav</tt> needs the archive number as a parameter – for example  </tt> on Archive 3.
 * archive nav</tt> similar to the above, but a dynamic list of links, – for example  </tt> on Archive 33.
 * atn</tt> is similar, but doesn't need a parameter.
 * talkarchivenav</tt> combines talkarchive and atn, adding navigation features to the standard notice.

Archive box
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 new archive has been created through the cut and paste procedure and if the page already has an archive box, add the link to the new archive page to it.

If the new archive has been created through the move procedure and if an archive template already exists, copy the archive template from the newly created archive page to the talk page and add a link to the new archive page to it.

If there is no archive box yet, you may want to set one up:


 * archives</tt>


 * may be a good idea for pages with a very large number of archives (such as Talk:Main Page); this uses a separate subpage to list the archives.


 * archive box</tt>


 * generates a floating box for the archive links. Just place your link as a parameter, for example  </tt>. Multiple archives can be named, linked and labeled in various ways. See the example archive box to the right. The wiki code used in the example box is: '  </tt> (the example links are red because the pages they link to do not actually exist) (for details see the template page). As an alternative, provided the archives are in the precise format of "Archive numbered-sequence", the list can be generated auto-magically using    or    (for details see Automatic links)


 * archive box collapsible</tt>


 * is a visual modification of  </tt>, which generates a collapsible box that can be opened with a click. It works with the same parameters as <tt>  </tt>. See the example to the right. Detailed instructions are on the template page.


 * <tt>My talk archives</tt>


 * specifically for a user talk page. It is small and scrolls so it doesn’t dominate the page. Usage instructions are on the template page.

Automatic archive box
Both archive box and archive box collapsible can automatically list links to archives. Instructions are on both of the template pages.

One example is <tt> </tt>. It will automatically create an archive box of links to archives labeled "Archive 1", "Archive 2", etc.. For an example see Help talk:Archiving a talk page. Archives with other names can be added as parameters. (See Talk:Iraq War for an example).

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 probate section to the Wales article. Before bringing up the topic we can do the following search:. This will look in all the subpages of the Wales 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.

Permanent link archives method
With this method, instead of copying discussions to a separate page, you simply provide a link to an earlier version of the page. Caveat: it is not possible to link to an earlier version of a page with a Wikipedia-style link. You have to supply the full URL. These pages do not show up in search engines, as they are dynamically generated.

Procedure

 * 1) Go to the talk page you wish to archive and click on permanent link in the toolbox section of the left sidebar. Alternatively, go to the page history of the talk page and select the revision you want to use.
 * 2) Copy the complete URL from the navigation bar of your web browser.
 * 3) Edit the talk page and delete the text you want to archive. While you're still in the edit window, make a link to the URL you copied at the top. Keep in mind that syntax for full URL links is different than for Wikilinks. Here is an example:
 * 4) Save. You have now archived a talk page.

You can make the link shorter, and hence keep the wikitext of the page more readable, by replacing the path to the page with a <tt> </tt> link, leaving the "oldid" section at the end. For example, the link given above could be replaced by this:


 * <tt> [ Archive 1] </tt>

which would display as [ Archive 1]. If you wish, you can also prevent the "external link" icon from appearing (since this isn't an external link anyway) by enclosing the link with tags like this:


 * <tt> [ Archive 1] </tt>

which displays as [ Archive 1].

Advantages of this method

 * It is simpler and requires fewer resources.
 * There is some guarantee that the discussions have not been altered mistakenly or by vandals.
 * This strategy can be particularly useful for summarising discussions; you provide a succinct overview of the various points of view and a link to the complete, unadulterated discussion.
 * Unlike the move procedure it does not reset the history of the page.

Disadvantages of this method

 * Searching for past discussions is not possible, as the discussions archived by this method do not show up in search engines or Wikipedia search.
 * You cannot organize topics into one place, although you can list links to sections within the page history that are relevant to a particular topic.
 * Archives cannot be easily repartitioned and recombined as with the subpage method. If you later wished to divide up the archives in a different way, you would need to paste all past archives to the talk page, save, and then rearchive (note that when this is done, the revision history becomes muddied).
 * An edit of the archive by mistake (and ignoring the warning) would overwrite the current talk page. (this can be reverted)
 * It is the less common of the two methods and may cause confusion even for experienced editors who are not familiar with the "permanent link" function in the toolbox.
 * It does not show up in special:whatlinkshere/page_title of the linked pages.

Ongoing discussions
It is difficult to say exactly when a discussion "ends" and when it is ongoing. Given that archived discussions are immutable, archiving a discussion effectively ends that particular discussion. There is ongoing work on this issue.

Examples
Here are actual discussion pages on Wikipedia where you can study the code to see how archive pages were created.


 * has a simple archive box and an archive notice that can be copied to a talk page to announce that an archiving has taken place.
 * has a mixture of numbered and topical archives. It also includes a summary of recently archived discussions.