Help talk:Archiving a talk page/Archive 6

Archive 1

←

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Sequentially numbered archives section

Is there any reason we don't just put the code for this into the table at the bottom of each set of code to be copied instead of providing this instruction:

In general, you should include {{Archives|bot=bot name}} (to provide a search box) along with the content of one the following columns (starting with {{ and ending with }}).

Wouldn't it be simpler if people could just copy/paste the whole thing, all together? When would the average editor needing this help page ever not want to provide a search box/index of archives on a talk page? —valereee (talk) 11:27, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

The only case I can think of for not including a search box is if {{Talk header}}, which adds an archive search box unless specified otherwise, is on the page. Graham87 14:45, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@Graham87, so is that common enough that we need to treat it as the default? Because I'm thinking maybe the opposite is true. —valereee (talk) 00:25, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

(FWIW, I always prefer to be pinged, but I now see you didn't ping me so maybe that's my clue you prefer not to be? Sorry, if that's so, I'll try to remember not to ping if that's what you prefer!) —valereee (talk) 00:27, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

@Valereee: I don't mind either way ... just didn't even think about pinging. Old habits die hard! Yeah it's probably not common enough to be treated as a default. Feel free to make any edits you like re this part of the help page. Graham87 02:42, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Okeydoke, I've made that change, we'll see if anyone disagrees. :) —valereee (talk) 13:27, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@Valereee: Thanks, sounds good! Graham87 14:58, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I had long ago considered doing this, but instead of the way you did it I considered placing the "{{Archive..." around the names already in the first row of the table. I the reason I did not do that was for two reasons:

1. The instructions are helpful for editors who are not familiar with templates in explaining what needs to be cut and pasted.
2. For the same reason explaining that difference between the templates is useful in helping a novice to understand that they are doing. This is doubly so as you placed the two distinct templates into the table without making it clear that neither of which directly rely on the other).

Therefore I am reverting the edit until a consensus for change can be agreed. -- PBS (talk) 11:55, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@PBS, that's fine, I knew someone might object!

I guess my argument is the shortest simplest effective instruction is the best, and right now the instruction is, "cut and paste the stuff in the box below, and then also cut and paste this other bit of markup and paste it at the bottom of what you've just cut and pasted, and then add the correct bot name in the correct place".

Why not just put all the markup into the cut-paste box correctly formatted and say "cut and paste this"?

I feel like I've come across multiple pages that are getting archived, but to where? Because someone who probably didn't notice the second "Oh yeah, also do this" part of the instruction just cut and pasted the stuff in the box. And I don't even know how to fix that...I suspect simply adding the second cut-paste at this late date isn't correct...it might do something weird to the numbering?...hm, don't want to break it worse...so I end up going to the help desk and asking someone more competent if they can fix it. And how many people would even bother to do that but instead would just shrug and move on, or not even notice the page was archiving but there was no index?

IMO, the job of this help page isn't to teach people how to use templates. The job of this help page is to make sure archives are added correctly to talk pages.

And frankly being a novice has nothing to do with that. I come back here literally every time I need to add an archive, and while I've figured out there are two bits of markup I need to cut/paste, it's a pain to have to cut-paste, cut-paste again, then come back and make sure I've spelled the name of the bot correctly when I added it. Why can't I just have a neat-and-tidy single cut-paste that I don't have to then make changes to? I mean, if I need to just add that to my own user, I guess I can, but I have to believe there are other people who are doing the exact same thing. —valereee (talk) 13:09, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@—valereee I have made an edit to address the points you raised (as I agree that a cut and past option is desireable), but also keeping what I think is important in way of an explanation for novice editors or those editors not familiar with templates. If you object to the change then revert the change and we an discuss it further. -- PBS (talk) 12:20, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@PBS, but why is even two cut-pastes required? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be obstinate, but the entire rest of the page is available for people who want to learn more about this process, plus multiple other instructional pages for people who want to dig deeper. The point of a help page on archives is to get pages archived correctly, not to force people to learn something before allowing them to do this otherwise simple task. 95% of this help page seems to be directed at people who already understand most of this stuff. Literally the only part I'm interested in is section 4.2.

Maybe a TLDR section headed "Archiving for dummies" that just has a straight cut-paste of Cluebot III and one instruction: "Copy and paste unchanged below the header section of the page you want archived"? That would be fine with me, and then those who do want to know more can find it elsewhere on the page? —valereee (talk) 14:14, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I am not ignoring your last comment, but as we disagree on how best to present the information on this help page (particularly for inexperienced users), I am waiting for others to enter the discussion, in the hope we can build a consensus. -- PBS (talk) 14:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

PBS, valereee I just came to this talk page searching for an old conversation I had somewhere. I can't find it now, but I think this help page is one of the most confusing ones on Wikipedia. I still find it confusing even though I have set up talk page archiving a couple of times now. "Archiving for dummies" at the top is 100% the best and I would love that.

On a different note: I still find the comparisons between ClueBot III and lowercase sigmabot III confusing too. Is it just me or has ClueBot only advantages? but then: why is no one using it? or is it about the delay? Mvbaron (talk) 16:23, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mvbaron, I agree, from the comparison chart in section 4.1, to me it looks like Cluebot III is the clear choice. It's the only one I use. —valereee (talk) 13:36, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Needs a nutshell!

This is an absurdly long wall of text to not have a nutshell summary. WP:V's:

V 0.01:

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis
| age=2160 <!--in HOURS; 2160=90 days-->
| archiveprefix={{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}/Archive
| numberstart=1
| maxarchsize=75000
| header={{Automatic archive navigator}}
| minkeepthreads=3
| maxkeepbytes= 
| minarchthreads=2
| format= %%I
| archivebox=yes
|archivenow={{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}
}}

Agree. Situation still absurd. Does the above accomplish "Use this substitution template to insert an auto-archive header that is maximally self-documenting, an Archive notice banner, archive box with search." or still <tbd>? Not sure if the code is right but I've improved the display. Template:Archiveme spouts this hogwash: "If you see this and you'd like to set up automatic archival, please find easy instructions at Help:Archiving a talk page#Automated archiving."! Plus this, which is contradicted below - "Before setting up automatic archiving on an article's talk page, please establish a consensus that archiving is really needed there."--50.201.195.170 (talk) 18:51, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

I added a nutshell, not sure it's quite right, including a link to a page I've just created with plain and simple instructions for people who aren't interested in understanding everything on this page. —valereee (talk) 16:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Retroactive?

I've been on here for years, but have been intimidated by the coding and such. So I'm JUST getting around to putting an archive on my unwieldy talk page. However, I've just added it and don't see anything different. Is there a way to auto-archive sections on my talk page retroactively? Like, I kind of only want the comments there for the last year. How is this done?--Criticalthinker (talk) 09:21, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Criticalthinker: The new archiving instruction on your talk page looks fine to me. Currently, "old(182d)" asks for archiving after six months, so if you want to retain threads for a whole year, you should increase that to "old(365d)". The archiving instruction doesn't take effect instantly, but the archiving bot should be along within 24 hours to act on your instruction. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:36, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, if it's not instant, then that answer my question. I guess I'll be patient. Thank you, @John of Reading:. --Criticalthinker (talk) 09:43, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Forcing the bot to archive now

How do I force a bot to archive now? I'd like to archive some sections in Talk:Artificial intelligence. Pin me if you answer. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 01:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@CharlesGillingham: The easiest way to archive sections *immediately* is to use OneClickArchiver. Normally you could temporarily decrease the archiving period to get the bot to archive a section, but Lowercase sigmabot III is down at the moment ... it should be back up soon though. Graham87 06:15, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

And it editie this very page about four hours after my last message. Graham87 15:45, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

What happens if a bot archives a discussion that is still notable and may need to continue?

What happens if a bot archives a discussion that is still notable and may need to continue? Krystal Kalb (talk) 02:53, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Krystal Kalb: WP:ARCHIVENOTDELETE says "If a thread has been archived prematurely, such as when it is still relevant to current work or was not concluded, unarchive it by copying it back to the talk page from the archive, and deleting it from the archive. Do not unarchive a thread that was effectively closed; instead, start a new discussion and link to the archived prior discussion." In most cases, I think starting a new thread is preferable. Going forward you can use {{Pin message}}. It is probably best to discuss this issue on the relevant talk page to establish consensus for this specific case.Chris Troutman (talk) 03:08, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

New subpage behaviour?

I created a talk page subpage for an archive just now and instead of a blank page that I would simply add the 'AAN' template to I got a complicated screen inviting me to start a new discussion. This seems new to me, is there any way to bypass it and carry on as normal? Thanks Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 18:25, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

@Nimbus227: A better place for this question would be the technical village pump. Graham87 00:42, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I was hoping to encounter editors who regularly archive talk pages here. I will ask over there. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 07:49, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

It is new behaviour, to disable it select 'open wikitext editor' in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:31, 22 July 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)

Adding two cents, echoing Graham87: I finally decided to investigate how archiving works partly in frustration with overly aggressive archiving. For talk pages with infrequent additions, there is no need to sweep away discussions after a couple weeks and leave a mostly blank talk page. Often past discussions, esp. ones that establish notable points of consensus for an article, can remain relevant for months or years. The minthreads parameter seems like an excellent idea. CAVincent (talk) 05:17, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Gracefully migrating from User:HBC Archive Indexerbot

I'd like to get the archiving working again on Talk:Stanley Kubrick. However, there's massive archives there already, and I fear breaking things if I just yank out User:HBC Archive Indexerbot and stuff Miszabot in its place - as I'm not all that skilled at backend work. Is it actually the case that if I did as I just mentioned, everything would transparently work? If not, is there a guide somewhere on migrating from one to the other? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:42, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I think you've had a major mixup between HBC Archive Indexerbot, an archive-indexing bot, and lowercase sigmabot III (formerly the MiszaBots, which actually performs the automated archiving. The archiving bot is doing exactly what it's told to do because there are precisely five level-two sections on the page, so your first edit was a good thing to try, but your second edit wasn't. Graham87 07:24, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Checking out the discussions further, I realised that there isn't really much point in keeping them open, so I went and archived them all manually to Talk:Stanley Kubrick/Archive 14. Graham87 07:34, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

My confusion here was clearly rampant! Appreciate the fix. I keep running across talk pages that either haven't ever been archived even though an archiver is in place - or pages with seemingly working archives - with a handful of comments dating from the early 2000's that are never caught by them. I've got a lot of reading to do... cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 07:57, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The former problem can be because of the spam blacklist or an archiver misconfiguration, and the latter problem is common because signature formats used to be different (and because there are many early unsigned/improperly signed messages). Graham87 15:46, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

In that vein, having poked around some, I assume you're familiar with User:Enterprisey/archiver? Is that a good solution for dealing with such one-off cases without incurring too much personal-bandwidth-overhead, so to speak? (I guess I could have just asked 'is that easy?' but excessive verbosity is my forté). cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 18:42, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I've heard of it but I'm not usually a script person (compared to most Wikipedians) and it doesn't really fit my workflow anyway; when archiving I like to fix unsigned/badly signed comments along the way. But I guess if it helps you, you can use it ... Graham87 02:49, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Editing an archived talk page

What happens if you edit an archived talk page?Cwater1 (talk) 23:25, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Cwater1 Most likely either nothing at all or someone gets a bit annoyed at you, but there really shouldn't be any reason for you to do so. Editing old comments just makes it difficult to follow the discussion and to know what was said, replying to an archived thread will likely not give you any answers and messing around with formating or templates on such a page is basically just a waste of time with few exceptions. --Trialpears (talk) 23:51, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

True, but it's fine to edit an archive page if you're fixing a problem with it, or if a bunch of super-old talk page comments refuse to auto-archive because of incompatible or no signature lines on them. But for just about any other purpose besides that, it accomplishes nothing. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:09, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I see. To continue a conversation, start a new one or go to the users talk page.Cwater1 (talk) 02:13, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Moving talk archives

I think this may require special handling. The page Talk:Killing of Caylee Anthony is partially broken, because the archives were not moved when the article was renamed from 'Death of Caylee Anthony'. I was trying to fix the autoarchiving, and became lost because even though it shows that archiving is in place, there were no archives linked on the page. So I think this needs someone with page mover grants...? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 01:28, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't necessarily need page-move rights but they do make things a lot faster. I've done all the relevant moves. Graham87 01:50, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very kindly, Graham. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 02:14, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

A separate - though related - question though. As I was poking at the header to try to "fix" things (I abandoned doing so as it was sure to be a mess) I noticed that the Miszabot configs had a couple of 'blp' configs:

{{User:MiszaBot/config

|blpo = yes

|archiveheader = {{aan}}

|maxarchivesize = 200K

|collapsed = yes

|counter = 12

|blp = yes

|minthreadsleft = 0

|minthreadstoarchive = 1

|algo = old(180d)

|archive = Talk:Killing of Caylee Anthony/Archive %(counter)d }}

But I looked around at the relevant pages regarding both misza and lowercasesigmabot, and couldn't find those fields, though it's certainly possible I didn't look thoroughly enough. Are they valid fields? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 02:19, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I noticed those too but I didn't check any deeper because they didn't seem to be doing any harm ... I'd never encountered those parameters before in an archiving template either. Using a few iterations of WikiBlame I found out they were added in this edit by Yobot. I've gone and removed them. Graham87 16:20, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Vandalism in archived talk pages

Archived talk pages generally have a notification reading "Do not edit the contents of this page." Does this apply if a talk page has been vandalized, then archived? Is it OK to remove the vandalism in this cases, or should it be left as is?

For the purposes of this, "vandalism" means the most blatant of the blatant -- editing somebody else's comment and/or template to include crude vandalism along the lines of "i fucked your mom," making it appear that they originally said it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:21, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff: Yes, if I saw something like that, I would fix up the archive, giving a clear edit summary. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:32, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, will do (unfortunately this isn't a hypothetical...). Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:38, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff: Yes I've encountered this situation several times. The admonition about not editing archives doesn't apply at all to maintenance edits such as removing vandalism, adding more text that hadn't been archived before, etc. Graham87 15:27, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Help

Can someone please explain how to archive a single discussion thread on a talk page? Thanks. Sng Pal (talk) 07:00, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

You can use User:Evad37/OneClickArchiver. Graham87 07:54, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

lead

In the lead we say

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. Removal of content from your user talk page, such as warnings posted by others, is considered evidence you have seen the content; this is true whether the removal was manual or automatic. (emph mine)

This isn't making sense to me -- is the bolded sentence actually specifically about user talk pages? Valereee (talk) 14:27, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I've removed that sentence. It was added in May 2010 and is a holdover from when this page listed multiple procedures, including permalinking, before this 2012 RFC. When permalinking was used it was most common historically on the village pump pages (see the "old series" archive links at Wikipedia:Village pump archive) and user talk pages. Graham87 16:23, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

+1 Valereee (talk) 16:24, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

How long before the bot kicks in?

From here, I pasted this:

{{subst:Setup cluebot archiving|archives=yes}}

at Talk:Derek_Williams_(musician) over the weekend, below all the curly bracket info at the top of the page, and according to the article above, the archiving should have kicked in within a couple of days. The bot has worked elswhere I have used it. Any suggestions as to why this is not working? Chrisdevelop (talk) 14:01, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the parameters of the {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} template it created, it has |minkeepthreads = 5 - this means the bot will always leave at least 5 threads (header level 2 sections) on the page before it attempts to archive any, and Talk:Derek Williams (musician) is currently sitting at just 3, so the bot won't attempt to archive any threads right now. Aidan9382 _(talk) 14:25, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! As the threads are very long and very old, I have reduced to 3 to see if that cleans up the talk bloat. Chrisdevelop (talk) 15:31, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

That won't help because there are only three threads on that page. The threads aren't *that* long or old compared to many threads on other Wikipedia talk pages; I wouldn't have set up archiving on that page, to be honest. Graham87 (talk) 03:15, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Feedback requested: use of 'archiveN' as subpage name for active, non-archival page

The Wikipedia:Featured articles process appears to regularly use pagenames of the form Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/<Article name>/archiveN for active, ongoing discussion. I raised a discussion about this, and your feedback would be welcome at WT:Featured article candidates#Use of 'archiveN' as subpage name for active, non-archival page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:52, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback: Archiving in the context of a page that uses level-one headings as dividers

Please see this discussion about a proposal to enable archiving of level-two discussions at a page (like WP:Help desk) that uses level-one headings to group atomic discussions by date. Mathglot (talk) 19:03, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Unclear whether "lowest number" means 0 or 1

I.e. "where N is the lowest number for which no archive exists." under Manual archiving. Ybllaw (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Normally archives will begin at 1, so /Archive 1, /Archive 2, etc. If there's no archives, you'll want to start at 1. Aidan9382 _(talk) 18:05, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

When to archive a talk page

So I've recently been having this very strange interaction with JayBeeEll, now ending with - it's a talk page that is over 30 KB long and has a thread from 10 years ago, but this user doesn't want to let me enable archiving that. Is this normal? Am I crazy? :D --Joy (talk) 19:39, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Um, no, that's not what's happening. You want to archive all discussions except the most recent. JayBeeEll wants to archive all discussions except the most recent five (which is the default). Just leaving one does seem over-aggressive. Dan Bloch (talk) 20:48, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

So there's 15 threads there now. Leaving up to 5 will leave discussions from mid-2020 there, which is already 4 years ago. Are these actually relevant? What's the aggressive part? --Joy (talk) 12:22, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

5 is pretty typical, even when there are years-old threads. It lets people easily see if what they came in to discuss has been discussed recently -- whatever that means for that talk page -- and whether new threads even typically receive any responses. I recently came into a talk with a concern about something and saw there'd been a discussion three years earlier, so I knew who to ping. I'll even manually archive newer discussions to prevent the archiving of older ones if the older ones seem more helpful. Valereee (talk) 13:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Danbloch and Valereee. Archiving has a benefit as the solution of a particular problem (the unnavigability of large talk-pages) but it also has costs (it makes it hard to see past discussions and the conclusions that they reached). Fast (90 days on lightly-used pages) or aggressive (leaving only 0 or 1 threads) archiving settings increase the costs without providing any extra benefit. --JBL (talk) 18:37, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Guys, I'm sympathetic to these general arguments, but I feel like you didn't actually have a look at the context of this particular Talk:Jon Entine page... even once the bot archives the 10-year-old threads, and even if we let it archive the 4-year-old threads, it's still going to take 7 PageDowns to get to the discussion from March last year. That talk page already provides so much context that it's actually borderline unwelcoming. --Joy (talk) 08:54, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

No, I looked at it. I'd say the answer is set up typical archiving (generally I default to 90 days and 5 threads kept), then manually archive any threads you think are not worth keeping. Valereee (talk) 11:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Updates

Based on discussions at Template talk:Archives, I plan to update this page soon. Feel free to join in the conversation there or to offer any feedback on things that should be fixed. Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Merging two different archiving styles?

The Amanita Muscaria Talk page has two archive methods—traditional numbered archives, and a CluBot III archive since 2020. Shouldn't these two be merged, and if so, how is this done? — al-Shimoni (talk) 15:40, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, they should, and I've gone and done this. The page receives far too little traffic for date-based archives (they mostly only contained one section each), so I cut-and-pasted all the text from the newer archives into Talk:Amanita muscaria/Archive 3 (except for the October 2022 archive, which only contained an earlier version of the section in the June 2023 archive). I switched the archiving bot over to Lowercase sigmabot III because that's just easier at this point, but automated archiving probably won't be needed there again for a while yet. I also attended to a broken link anchor notice on that talk page and, as an admin, deleted the useless ClueBot indexing subpages. Graham87 (talk) 03:43, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Merge subpages?

This template currently uses several subpages:

1. Help:Archiving a talk page/Other procedures
2. Help:Archiving a talk page/Manual archiving
3. Help:Archiving a talk page/Naming

Would there be any objection to merging all of these onto a single subpage like:

Help:Archiving a talk page/Details

I think that would make the content easier to access, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 21:17, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

No problems here, as the creator of the first subpage as a result of this RFC. Graham87 (talk) 03:57, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:J.G. Wentworth

Can someone merge the tiny archive pages at Special:Prefixindex/Talk:J.G. Wentworth/ together? This page is not active enough to need yearly archive pages, archiving just 2 or 3 threads per archived year of 1 or 2 posts on each thread, with many years of no threads whatsoever.

-- 65.92.246.77 (talk) 21:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Done. The user who set up this archiving system did so on many hundreds or thousands of pages in such a disruptive manner that I got them indefinitely topic-banned from doing so. Graham87 (talk) 02:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Predictive analytics

Can someone merge the tiny by year talk archives for this page Special:Prefixindex/Talk:Predictive analytics/ into regular serial archives? There's not much to archive in each year. and the last archive year is 2018. -- 65.92.246.77 (talk) 22:28, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm on it. Graham87 (talk) 03:49, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Done; same as previous section ... and I switched the archiving bot because it's easier. As I'm no longer an admin, I'll have to tag the remaining indexing pages with {{Db-g6}} rather than deleting them myself. Honestly I've encountered so many of these situations that I usually ignore them these days unless they're really egregious. The user I mentioned above is by no means the only person to use date-based archives incorrectly; they're just by far the most prolific. Graham87 (talk) 04:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Help with Archive parameter

I want to archive my current talk page for this year but the Archive parameter shows previous years when I do not want it to. How do I fix this? Lemonademan22 (talk) 20:17, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

@Lemonademan22 How are you trying to archive the page, and what do you mean by "the Archive parameter"? In your recent edits, I see manual, cut-and-paste archiving. You could just make the page User talk:Lemonademan22/Archive 2025 whenever you're ready, but I feel you are asking about something else that has gone over my head, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 22:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I was trying to archive it by copying and pasting it yes but the Archive template (which I erroneously called the parameter) was showing archive pages for previous years despite the fact they don't exist. I simply decided not to use one instead as that would be a lot easier. If it helps the template I wanted to use was Template:Archive. Lemonademan22 (talk) 04:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

@Lemonademan22 Oh, you can use {{annual archive}} for the archive pages and {{archived annually}} for the main talk page. You shouldn't need to fill out any parameters on either template. Template:Archive was coded for navigation on sequentially numbered archives (Archive 1, Archive 2, and so on). There is discussion on the talk page about getting it set up to automatically handle annual archives but it's not there yet and there are a couple other issues to work out first. Feel free to ask if any of this is unclear, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:48, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, appreciate it! Lemonademan22 (talk) 05:41, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

More explicit standards

Could there be standard settings mentioned on this page, and would it help?

I have been chewing through the list of longest talk pages. My rules for myself:

• if the talk page is very active (you can spot them on the list), I leave the settings alone
• if talk page has more than five old threads, usually with no date attached, I archive those manually. Otherwise I change the settings so the bot will get to them
• if someone changes my changes back, I jot a note on their talk page advising them on what I usually do. It's hard to convince people not to blank talk pages or in one case to have an auto-archiving time of 5 years (!)

The settings I almost always copy and paste are:

{{User:MiszaBot/config
	|archiveheader = {{Talk archive}}
	|algo = old(365d)
	|maxarchivesize = 50K
	|minthreadsleft = 5
	|minthreadstoarchive = 1
	|counter = 
	|archive = Talk:ARTICLENAME/Archive %(counter)d
}}

However I do think 6 months is fine too, or 75k archive size, depending on how active the page is or how long the topics are. On one occasion there was a very long discussion (across several topics), taking up 150k and that had finished two years ago. I sent all the related topics to the same numbered archive manually. But that's rare.

But as I indicated about 1 in 50 of these talk pages will have someone making sure that the page is always blank, or very long, or some other odd behavior. I have looked for, but cannot find, any detailed guidelines saying what a normal talk page should look like and why. Wizmut (talk) 16:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

My recommendations and reasons would go something link this, although I'm pretty flexible:

Archive header : whatever is there is probably fine. There are perhaps a dozen names for this template, some are more explicit and some are more brief.

Algo : an archiving time of more than one year or less than three months is usually not necessary. The exception is if the talk page is currently or habitually very fast-moving. Highly controversial news stories may start out with a fast archiving time that is later relaxed.

Max archive size : 50k is on the low end and also appropriate for most pages, in which discussions are usually short. Too many topics on the same archive page can be hard to navigate. A size larger than 200k may be too much text, unless this is an archive containing multiple related topics created in a short time.

Min threads left : The default of 5 remaining threads is expected, although fewer may be desirable if the discussions tend to be long. Keeping some discussions on the talk page helps first-timers see what happens on a talk page. Talk pages should generally not be "blanked" if there is a normal amount of discussion on them (5-10 topics), even if the topics are unlikely to garner replies. But if one huge and old topic occupies a talk page for a long time, it may be appropriate to archive it manually.

Min threads to archive : The default of 1 is expected unless the talk page is moving very fast.

Counter : is managed by the bot and should only be incremented to cut off an archive page in special circumstances. Perhaps, before and after the article is renovated, if doing so would not create a tiny archive.

Archive name : should match the article name, and is usually corrected by a bot if there is any mistake. Wizmut (talk) 17:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, thanks for doing this. I'd personally go for 100K though and I think that's closer to the average these days, but your mileage may vary. When I'm setting up archiving, I usually copy and paste the template from Talk:King Arthur, where I set up automated archiving in July 2018, back when I was doing this sort of thing more often (see the relevant entry for that month in my personal Wikipedia timeline). The King Arthur talk page is relatively busy so I set the algo parameter there to 90 days, but for less active talk pages I usually set it to a year. Graham87 (talk) 03:45, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

@Wizmut: Thanks for taking a look into the bot stuff. Some thoughts:

• Regarding, "There are perhaps a dozen names for this template, some are more explicit and some are more brief." Agree that there's no preference for one over the other. If you go back a decade or so, many of the names were actually different templates with slightly different text and features, which not having been around back then seems very chaotic. The archive header templates that are different are for date-based archives.
• Regarding "I have looked for, but cannot find, any detailed guidelines saying what a normal talk page should look like and why." The only stuff I found was at WP:TALKSIZE, WP:OWNTALK, and WP:BLANKING.
• I checked to see if the editor who started adding code samples was still around. John of Reading is still active, but that was in 2012 so I don't know if this is still on their mind. Valereee started Help:Archiving (plain and simple), and Qwerfjkl started {{Setup cluebot archiving}}. And so they would might have some relevant brains to pick regarding archiving defaults.

Good luck! Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:36, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

I just copied {{subst:Setup auto archiving}}. My only comment would be that I feel smaller archives are generally better; massive ones are a huge pain on older/mobile devices, and there's no real reason not to keep them small apart from navigation (which is what the search bar is for after all). — Qwerfjkltalk 12:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

For maxarchivesize, I recommend 500K. When you want to browse or search an archive, you want it all in one place, not thinly sliced.

“Each individual archive should not be larger than 512kB, because this may cause accessibility problems for some devices”. I think this is very old. What device has accessibility problems at 512K. How often will someone on such a device be browsing archives?

My personal testing is that no problems arise with 1MB. Occasionally I have seen much larger pages (being deleted at MfD for being too large, and NOTWEBHOST), and they are no problem to access from a PC, but were a problem on my smartphone. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

500K is pushing it with my screen reader setup, but I do have ways of getting around that sort of problem (and it depends how many links and headings there are on the page ... and on most talk pages that aren't that active, a limit of 100K will only )produce a few archives at the most). Around 100K just feels like a more typical case to me. I sometimes raise it to 200 or 300K for particularly busy talk pages. Graham87 (talk) 13:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, RJJ. Wizmut, I personally think this page is mostly for people who are interested in the technical side of setting up archives so they can set them up on pages that need some sort of unusual archiving. I've suggested before that this page be moved to Help:Archiving (technical) and that Help:Archiving (plain and simple) be moved here. Last time this was discussed others agreed, but there was concern expressed over making the move correctly, and I wasn't sure I understood any complexity, so it ended up archiving unactioned. @Graham87, was there something in particular you were concerned about that makes that move complex? Valereee (talk) 11:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Re: standards. Your rules for yourself seem reasonable to me. I personally like to see five threads, even if they're very old, because that gives me a quick idea of what's been discussed most recently. For instance, if I go to an article and something seems strangely missing, I'll check the talk to make sure it isn't being discussed or been discussed recently. If there's literally been no discussion of that strangely missing info in the five discussions on the page, which go back six years, I won't bother to check the archives. If the page is blank, I can't easily see that info and have to check the archives. Valereee (talk) 12:09, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

@Valereee: Re the possibility of a page move: yes the archives and everything else would have to be moved correctly ... but I just thought of another possible snag: links that point here that might really be looking for the technical info. Maybe a proper requested moves process might iron that sort of thing out? Graham87 (talk) 12:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Right now we have:

• Help:Archiving (plain and simple) with step by step instructions for a default bot setup
• Help:Archiving a talk page (this page) with an overview
• Help:Archiving a talk page/Details with technicals details linked from this overview

Going through the redirects, five point to sections of this page and should continue to do so. The others should probably point to whatever is the default archiving page. And yes, there are definitely places like Template:Templates for archiving that are linking to both a technical overview and simple instructions. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:00, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

Can someone help fix the useless archiving on this page? Talk:War in Abkhazia (1992–1993) (edit | subject | history | links | watch | logs) It is set up for monthly archives, of which, it has created several 1-thread archives. The first archive is 20 years worth of threads 100kB instead of monthly breakdown, so is incosistently named and unreasonable. If possible make the first archive "Archive 1" and merge everything else into "Archive 2", and make the auto-archiver settings less unreasonable -- 65.93.183.249 (talk) 04:05, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm working on it. I'm not a fan of this type of archiving either ... Graham87 (talk) 05:27, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

All done. Graham87 (talk) 06:16, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks -- 65.93.183.249 (talk) 07:46, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Talk header § RfC: tooltip wording, minthreadstoarchive

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Talk header § RfC: tooltip wording, minthreadstoarchive. Mathglot (talk) 05:32, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

FAQ: should an archive ever be edited?

@Cwater1, Trialpears, Anastrophe, Yug, Jay, Place Clichy, and CommunityNotesContributor: I don't have any strong opinion here, but it would be good for a summary of the question and answers to go on WP:ARCHIVE. Volunteers welcome. Here's a rapid attempt to quote key parts that I found:

Q1: Is it OK to edit a closed discussion to fix dead links? (in reference to an archived high-profile RfC)

A1: General answer is no. ...

Q2: Help talk:Archiving a talk page/Archive 6#Editing archives - What are the cases, can we edit an archive to avoid a double-redirect or when a shortcut has changed?

A2: (not quite sure what the answer was here ...)

Q3: Help talk:Archiving a talk page/Archive 6#Editing an archived talk page - What happens if you edit an archived talk page?

A3: Most likely either nothing at all or someone gets a bit annoyed at you, but there really shouldn't be any reason for you to do so. ... it's fine to edit an archive page if you're fixing a problem with it, or if a bunch of super-old talk page comments refuse to auto-archive because of incompatible or no signature lines on them. But for just about any other purpose besides that, it accomplishes nothing.

Boud (talk) 12:55, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

WP:TPO have good guidance on editing others comments which editing in archives usually involves. I'm general archives should only be edited in connection to (un)archiving or for technical reasons like fixing template, lint or category issues. Never change the meaning of comments in an archive, including your own. Trialpears (talk) 15:07, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Per above, there are exceptions but few and far between. Unless you are fixing something that is page-breaking or can break the page, you are not improving it by editing. A realistic question would also be Will other editors be annoyed if you edit archive pages to fix broken links? and the answer would be "Yes, please don't do this." CNC (talk) 15:23, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

@CommunityNotesContributor My impression is indeed that there is a consensus against fixing links on talk pages in particular but I will note that most talk page archives have 0 page watchers and thus these edits are unlikely to annoy anyone. I also think page breaking is too high of a bar. Converting accidental category invocations to links removing templates that are being deleted following a TfD are both examples of appropriate actions that are not page breaking. Trialpears (talk) 16:51, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Not entirely sure why I was pinged on this - no expertise on the topic - but no matter. The link Trialpears offered to WP:TPO indeed seems to cover pretty much the entirety of this, I think? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:21, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

This is why you were pinged :).

WP:TPO covers the case of an accidental category invocation. It doesn't literally cover a TfD template deletion, although that's within the spirt. But it seems to me that WP:TPO allows a lot more than is considered acceptable for archives. It wouldn't be acceptable to modify a section heading in an archive, it seems to me. I've put a draft below - please edit it directly based on this discussion. Or WP:BEBOLD and put it in place without waiting, and we'll edit there and discuss here. Boud (talk) 19:54, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Ah! I see now. My memory, she no so good the older I get. Thanks. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:10, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

There was a very lively discussion about this, contentious even, not too long ago, which I think was an Rfc. I will try to provide a link, but it might not be right away. I don't think you should go too far proposing new text to add here, until you have read it. Perhaps you can find it before I get to it. Mathglot (talk) 23:05, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Fine to wait to see if you or someone else can find that. Better to group together previous discussions. At a minimum, people may find this current discussion by searching, before or after it's ... archived. Boud (talk) 00:07, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I think you're referring to Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines/Archive 16#Request for comment: Do the guidelines in WP:TPO also apply to archived talk pages? I'd almost forgotten about that discussion. Graham87 (talk) 00:38, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes!! Thank you, Graham87! Mathglot (talk) 00:47, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

+1 despite opinions here including my opinion, any text added should be based on this close seeing as it is the recently established consensus on the matter. CNC (talk) 11:38, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Excellent. Others have hashed this out and voorts summarised and closed. Any objections to the very brief text below for WP:ARCHIVE? Boud (talk) 11:56, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking something a bit more substantial: see below. CNC (talk) 12:39, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Draft text to add to WP:ARCHIVE

BEGIN

When may I edit an archived page? second level header

Short answer: rarely. Long answer: see the Oct–Dec 2024 RfC: Do the guidelines in WP:TPO also apply to archived talk pages?

END

Please freely edit the above draft. Boud (talk) 19:54, 24 December 2025 (UTC) edited Boud (talk) 11:46, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Looks alright, I'm less fussed about the exact wording and more concerned over the tone. As long as it generally insinuates "don't do it unless you really know what you're doing" then I'm OK with it. CNC (talk) 20:07, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

If a behavioral guideline is being proposed, shouldn't that be discussed and written for Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:12, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Premature to propose anywhere; see § 23:05, 24 Dec. Mathglot (talk) 23:21, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

OK. Boud (talk) 00:07, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Edited. Boud (talk) 11:46, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Draft text as summary of RfC close

Can I edit an archived talk page? second level header

Rarely, with few exceptions. Talk page archives should not be edited to change the substantive meaning of discussions or disrupt their context; unacceptable edits include striking socks or banned editors, moving comments or reordering threads, and changing or adding section headings. Talk page archives should only be edited to remove material that breaches policy, such as copyvio, libel, and serious personal attacks; to fix things like linter errors and substitute templates before deletion; to implement oversight, revision deletion, or revert vandalism of archives. There is no consensus beyond these examples.

Condensed version (with or without notes):

Rarely, with few exceptions. Talk page archives should not be edited to change the substantive meaning of discussions or disrupt their context; they should only be edited to remove specific material that breaches certain policies.

@voorts Are you OK with paraphrasing/copying your close here? This would be easiest for now unless someone wants to work on improving it. With the devil in the detail it's difficult to summarise it any other way I found. I removed the context of consensus strength and where there is no consensus to focus on the consensus itself. Edit: Added a condensed version as a simpler answer, in case people prefer something more concise. CNC (talk) 12:53, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Edit: "to remove material that breaches policy" -> "to remove specific material that breaches certain policies". CNC (talk) 11:45, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

Notes

Fixed a typo. Graham87 (talk) 14:26, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Edit: Changed from "December" to "October to December"; the RfC started 16 Oct 2024.

Should we link the various items? In the case of the RfC close, non-linking was acceptable, but in this case, unless we want to say implicitly "if you don't know what this is, then we won't make it easier for you to learn and it's up to you to search", then we should add some WP namespace links, e.g. Wikipedia:Dealing with sockpuppets#Striking. Boud (talk) 16:07, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Edited: I've changed the susbtantive meaning to better match Mathglot's substantive concerns (and I just learnt the pronunciation recommendation to better distinguish substantive from substantial), and to remove some ambiguities. Boud (talk) 10:46, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

I am not okay with the words substantively change the meaning here as the main criterion of what to avoid, and doubly so in the absence of the follow-up context in the original. Changing the noun phrase substantive meaning to the adverbial substantively change is not what it says, and, ahem, substantively changes the substantive meaning of the close, imho. If you read the close including the context given in the next sentence it seems clear to me that voorts is using substantive meaning to mean essential meaning. He is not saying that it is okay to change the meaning of the talk archive as long as you only change it a little bit, or that it's okay to make moderate changes in meaning as long as you don't make substantive changes in meaning. (That would be disastrous to the integrity of Talk pages, if permitted.) He is saying the opposite: do not change the essential meaning of the words in the archive as written, and goes on to underline the point by saying that this applies even to changes that some people might think were minor changes that change only context and not meaning (sockstrikes, reordering comments, etc.) which would disrupt the context of the original, even if some claim no change to meaning. I think you had better either quote it verbatim, or make a vaguer statement with a pointer to it (something like, "should not change the meaning of Talk pages except in very limited circumstances as outlined in [​[Rfc link|this Rfc]​]"), or ask voorts to reword it for you, if it must be reworded. But I think setting "substantively change the meaning" as the bar of what to avoid will support a lot of mischief and I am opposed to it. Mathglot (talk) 19:54, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

That's a substantive point. Substantively (hopefully) corrected. And WP namespace links added. Boud (talk) 10:46, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

We should wait for voorts to chime in, if he chooses to. Also, next time, before changing anything in a previous comment, even if it is your own comment, please see WP:REDACT. Changing a comment after it has already been responded to can result in confusion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:59, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

Agree that we need to see if voorts wishes to participate here.

The problem with WP:REDACT in this context is that it doesn't cover the use of space within a comment for draft text that is intended for in-place editing by others; technical alternatives would be (i) create a sub-page, or (ii) edit WP:ARCHIVE directly, given that putting even a rough draft on WP:ARCHIVE would (probably) be better than the current total absence of any hints of an answer at all there.

I put comments in two places to make it clear that the draft text had been edited. If you think that (i) or (ii) would be less confusing, then please go ahead.

Personally I would tend to go for the short version with footnotes. If someone is just wondering in general, then s/he won't immediately want to know the details. If instead s/he really thinks that the desired edit is an acceptable exceptional case, then s/he should know that s/he has to spend some effort in verifying that that case qualifies as one of the exceptions per prior consensus (or happens to be a non-consensus case and s/he is willing to take the risk of a controversial edit that will be quickly reverted). Boud (talk) 11:32, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

I added a couple of words to the short version, in order to specify it's not all policies, not all material. Otherwise someone could read it and think it means anything not compliant with policy. I'm OK with either version and see the advantage in the shorter one with footnotes. CNC (talk) 11:50, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm okay with CNC's updated shorter one with footnotes, or the longer one, with a slight preference for the former. Mathglot (talk) 20:59, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

 Done with the shorter version based on rough consensus - no more objections after more than 72 hours since the last comment. Boud (talk) 14:20, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Problems with WP:REDACT (if they exist) should be taken up at WT:TALK (home of WP:REDACT). Text that is intended for in-place editing by others is tricky, and the existence of follow-up comments pretty much negates a comprehensible implementation in situ. You could move the editable text to a subpage, and then comments at the parent page could refer to revision id's in the subpage; but that is difficult to implement on a single page, hence the WP:REDACT guideline. (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 12:03, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

No, I do not. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:57, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

@Boud ~2026-21885-0 (talk) 05:05, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Can I help with you with something? CNC (talk) 10:10, 11 January 2026 (UTC)