Help talk:Archiving a talk page

Best Practice - Consensus - Initiating archiving bots

Hi, is there a best practice page (sort of process) how to know when to archive a talk page? I'm editing several articles recently and talk pages contain very old information (sections, comments). Initiating a section suggesting the use of one of the archive bots would be my idea. But how and when to reach consensus? Wait for how many votes/users to comment? In other words, how to implement archiving? Of course I feel good about adding/applying a bot, but before doing so, would like to hear some feedback on this. Thanks.--𝔏92934923525 (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@17387349L8764, you don't need consensus to set up archiving. If someone objects, which is unlikely, they can open a section and ping you for discussion. —valereee (talk) 13:43, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you @Valereee, will kick it off then. --17387349L8764 (talk) 13:47, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

The page currently says Note: Make sure to establish consensus before setting up ClueBot III or lowercase sigmabot III on a talk page other than your user talk page. Does that need to be updated? —2d37 (talk) 23:49, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems really odd. valereee (talk) 15:01, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Editing archives

In some cases, we may need to edit archives with minor (non-significant) modifications. This page doesn't seem to discuss this case. By example, section which are archived but seems unfinished / unprocessed, while they actually were processed. Adding a clear  Done{{done}} or closing remark helps to an archived discussion helps. Fixing a link helps. There are various cases when such marginal edits are ok, so a section "Editing archives" should discuss such case with do and don't. Yug (talk) 🐲 20:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support for an "Editing archives" section. Or we can rename the "Continuing discussions" section to this, and enhance for the cases where editing an archive in allowed. What are the cases, can we edit an archive to avoid a double-redirect or when a shortcut has changed? Jay (talk) 07:43, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
• Also, there is a discussion happening at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Moving back archives, which says that the "Continuing_discussions" sections seems to contradict another archive guideline. The help page makes a statement Given that archived discussions are immutable. This is without a context, and no previous mention of immutability with reference to an archive. Jay (talk) 06:02, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  I'll make the change as per that discussion archived here: WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 171#Moving back archives. Jay (talk) 16:31, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

which help page should be at this title?

I'm kind of wondering if Help:Archiving (plain and simple) ought to be at this location, and this page ought to be at Help:Archiving (technical)? I just feel like the average person looking for instructions is going to be more helped by the simple cut/paste page vs. this long description of every possible configuration? valereee (talk) 18:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm quite tempted by that idea tbh. Archiving is a mess and almost noone cares about the details. --Trialpears (talk) 19:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

And the folks who are interested in the tech details will still easily find them. valereee (talk) 19:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Ehh it doesn't bother me either way, as long as all the pages (and the archives) are moved properly). This page used to be even worse. Graham87 02:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Graham87, based on your comment, I'm not confident I know how to make sure everything is moved properly. Would you be willing to check my work? valereee (talk) 21:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Valereee: Sure. If you make sure that " Leave a redirect behind" is unchecked and the box to move subpages is checked, things should go reasonably smoothly. Graham87 03:57, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@Trialpears, would you be willing to make this move, based on the fact we've had no objections in over a month? I am cautious about making it myself because of the expressed concern about moving the archives correctly, as it sounds like that might be something I could screw up if Twinkle doesn't automatically assist. valereee (talk) 16:29, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Archival dependencies among discussions on different pages

I'm thinking about whether something should be done to link two (or more) discussions on different pages that have archival dependencies, either due to WP:SELTRANS or simply subject linkage, with the second (let's say, active and lively) discussion relying a great deal on items within the first one (quiescent, close to triggering the bot). Basically, this would be a feature saying that "discussion A depends upon discussion B, and shouldn't be archived while B is still open". Maybe something like a change to {{Do not archive until}} in order to accept a new named parameter, |depend=Other page#Some section for example. If considered desirable, this would require changes to the archive bots to support it, but first we should see if there's even support for the idea. Mathglot (talk) 22:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me! valereee (talk) 14:43, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

How many days of inactive discussion should a page be archived

In the end, I think 14 days should be enough for archiving. However some discussions are extreme and in the news topic, there are a lot of discussion, so we can archive sooner than 14 days? Thingofme (talk) 03:34, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

It depends on the page and the situation. For many pages, 14 days is far too quick because they don't get many discussions and issues can sometimes take years to be resolved. That's why the minthreads parameter exists. Graham87 05:33, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Graham87 what is minithread parameter? Venkat TL (talk) 11:41, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

@Venkat TL: The minthreads parameter determines how many threads should be left on the page after an archive bot has performed its archiving operation. Graham87 12:33, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Archives start at 0 or 1?

I feel this is an important part of the procedure that isn't mentioned. Should the first archive be archive 0 or achive 1? BrigadierG (talk) 12:07, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

They start at 1; see the examples of archive lists. Graham87 14:37, 10 May 2022 (UTC)