Help:Archiving talk pages

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Some talk pages get so much traffic that they routinely accumulate too much old content. If a page reaches a point where much of the content is from old discussions that are no longer salient or the page is just too long to facilitate easy usage, it might be time to create an archive of the page. The important thing to remember when creating an archive is that it is inadvisable to move ongoing conversations away from the main talk page. If there are important conversations ongoing, those should be left in main talk page, not the subpage archive. To archive a page follow the instructions listed below. Note that you must be an established registered user to archive pages.

Begin by moving the page you wish to archive to the new archive location. The new page title should be the complete article's name with the suffix "/Archive 1" added. If the page already has an archive, simply add the lowest number not already used. For example, to archive Talk:Tier list, it would first be moved to Talk:Tier list/Archive 1. But archive 1 has already been used for that talk page, so it would be moved to Talk:Tier list/Archive 3, as that is the next lowest archive number not yet used.
Once the page has been moved, add the archive template ({{archive}}) to the archive and cut out any (if there are any) ongoing discussions that will remain in the main talk page.
Now return to the main talk page and remove the redirect. Then add in the ongoing discussions (if any) to the page.
At the top of the main talk page add the substed template Template:arcbox. This is placed inside braces (i.e. {{subst:arcbox}}). After the arcbox, but before the braces, the number of each archive should be written, each separated by a pipe (|). For example, a page with three archives would use {{subst:arcbox|1|2|3}}

When archiving talk pages, there are a few things that should be considered:

Don't archive another user's talk page. If you feel that it is too long, ask them to archive it, but do not do it yourself.
Always use the move page tool. Do not simply create a new page and cut and paste the text. This splits the content and the edit history and makes it quite difficult for editors to review.
Don't archive a talk page just to get rid of a discussion you don't like.

This text is stored on Wikia Help. Suggest changes here.

What is a sequential archive?

Cutting and pasting the text to be archived into a new page is considered the best method for archiving a Talk page.

When archiving old discussions, it is customary to leave current, ongoing discussions on the existing Talk page. In some cases, a header text is also preserved.

For example, to archive the discussion on the talk page of this article:

Start at the Talk page.
Click on "Edit this page".
At the top of the edit area, type in:

[[Project talk:How to archive a talk page/Archive 1]]

Click on show preview.
Once the preview is on your screen, highlight the desired text in the edit box.
Cut the desired text from the page using CTRL-x or the cut command in the menu bar.
Click on the red colored "Project talk:How to archive a talk page/Archive 1" that is in the preview text. This will open a new page with an empty edit area.
Paste (using CTRL-v or the paste command in the menu bar) the desired text into the new page ("Project talk:How to archive a talk page/Archive 1") and the click on "save page".
Lastly, place a link to the archive on the talk page.

In due time, you would end up with a sequence of archives files named Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3 and so forth.

How do I archive by sub-topic?

To complement or replace a series of sequential archives, consider organising archives by sub-topic. This is less appropriate for personal Talk pages than for Talk pages in the article or Project namespace, where it may be desirable to be able to refer to earlier discussions quickly.

An example of sequential archiving can be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions.

Sometimes subpages under the given Talk page are appropriate. Other times, it may be best to move comments to the Talk page of a logically related article. So, for example, a discussion of French politics at [[Talk:France]] could be moved to the talk page of the [[Politics of France]] article.

In general, if you have two or more sequential archives, organising archives by topic may be a better alternative.

What is a monolithic discussion file?

For certain discussion pages, particularly those concerned with policy, which don't lend themselves to organising by topic, the following alternative archiving strategy may be preferable.

In this method, texts are simply deleted from a page and not moved to a different file. To reference an earlier discussion, you simply provide a link to an earlier version of the page. All discussions remain in one monolithic page file. One small caveat: it is not possible to link to an earlier version of a page with an internal-style link. You have to supply the full URL.

To create a link to an earlier version of a Talk page:

Open the Page History of the page
Open the relevant earlier version of the page which still contains the discussion.
Copy the complete URL from the navigation bar of your browser.
Paste this into the latest version of the Talk page. It will look something like this:

http://www.wikia.com/index.php?title=Talk:Community_portal&oldid=42890

You would then format this like this:

Also see this [http://www.wikia.com/index.php?title=Talk:Community_portal&oldid=42890 earlier discussion].

Note: because this is an URL and not a Wikilink, you use single square brackets ([ ]) rather than double ([[ ]]) and you use a space rather than a vertical bar (|) to separate the URL from the label.

The final result will look like this::

Also see this earlier discussion.

This archiving 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 discussion.

What about user talk pages?

It is recommended that you do not attempt to archive another user's talk page. These are not subject to the recommendations on this page, and each user may choose alternate means to archive their own talk page, including choosing not to archive at all, but to instead remove old messages.

When archiving your talk page by moving it, be aware that this causes the newly-created archive to be added to the watchlist of any user who was previously watching your talk page. This could be annoying for people who have no desire to watch your talk archives.

What should I use?

Separate archive files have the advantage that they are indexed and can be searched, whereas this is not the case with the monolithic approach. This should be taken into consideration for pages where people repeatedly ask the same kinds of questions and it is useful to be able to search the archives.

In closing, there are no fixed rules about archiving discussions on Wikia.