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. 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 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, 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 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.

There may be circumstances where it would be useful to keep older discussion present on a talk page, to avoid the same issues being repeatedly raised. However, this situation can be better addressed by use of the template.

Subpage archive method
The preferred method for archiving a talk page is to copy the older content to a series of subpages. There were formerly two alternative procedures which are no longer really used. They are still noted in the page linked above for historical reference to help users understand what is going on should they come across such a page, but they should no longer be used in actual practice, with the exception of user talk pages where the user has an established history of using one or the other of them.

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

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
Finished!
 * 1) Edit talk page, copying material you wish to archive to your computer's clipboard.
 * 2) Create an archive by searching for "User talk:username/Archive N" where N is the lowest whole number for which no archive exists. Your archive will be the N-th archive.
 * 3) Search should say that this page does not exist. Click the link offering to create/start it.
 * 4) Paste the clipboard contents into this archive and add  to the top and bottom of the source. Save the new archive.
 * 5) Delete copied material from main talk page with edit summary mentioning the name of the new archive.
 * 6) If an archive box doesn't already exist on the main talk page, add the line  as the first line of its source and save.

Detailed explanation

 * 1) Click on the edit tab 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 (also Ctrl, Cmd for Mac). 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. (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.
 * 9) Open the newly created subpage by clicking the red link. Paste the old discussions from your clipboard into the edit box.
 * 10) Add talk archive</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.

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
MiszaBot and ClueBot 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 they have received no comments for a specified period of time. See User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo or User:ClueBot III for instructions on setting this up. Note: Make sure to establish consensus before setting up MiszaBot or ClueBot III on a talk page other than your user talk page.

To set up automatic archival of an article or user talk page with MiszaBot, add the following near the top of the page:

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 navigation</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.
 * talk archive navigation</tt>, adds navigation features to the standard notice.
 * talk header</tt> contains an automatically appearing archive list and archive search box, if archives exist

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>. See the example to the right. Detailed 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.)

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

Archive indexing
HBC Archive Indexerbot can create an archive index page based on a set of archives. This index makes finding old discussions on a given topic easier, particularly in pages with many archives, or when the archives are of considerable size. See the bot's instructions for details on how to set up archive indexing.

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:. 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. There is ongoing work on this issue.

Examples
Here are actual discussion pages on TechInfoDepot 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, so the archives are listed on a separate subpage and transcluded with archives

Other procedures for archiving
These procedures were once considered equal options with the procedure described above. Over time both methods fell out of use and are generally not used. Note that if you have used the page move procedure those pages do not qualify for speedy deletion by user request.