Editing Help:Archiving a talk page (section)

== Automated archiving ==
{{for|plain and simple automated archiving|Help:Archiving (plain and simple)}}
{{shortcut|WP:AUTOARCHIVE}}
[[User:ClueBot III|ClueBot III]] and [[User:lowercase sigmabot III|lowercase sigmabot III]] can automatically create archives for any discussion page (one that has "talk" in the namespace), by moving sections to a subpage when the section has received no comments for a specified period of time. Both bots can archive sections into simple sequentially numbered archives (e.g. <code>YourPage/Archive&nbsp;1</code>, <code>YourPage/Archive&nbsp;2</code>, ...), or archive according to date (e.g. <code>YourPage/Archives/2013/June</code>, <code>YourPage/Archives/2013/July</code>, ...). 

See the '''[[User:ClueBot III|ClueBot III page]]''' and the '''[[User:lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo|lowercase sigmabot III page]]''' for detailed instructions on setting up these bots. Those pages explain each of the parameters used, such as <code>archiveheader</code>, <code>minthreadsleft</code>, etc. The examples below are also available for use. All of the examples here are intended for you to be able to copy them while viewing this page and paste them into the edit box on your target page without ''requiring'' any modification to have a working configuration. 

=== Choosing a bot ===
[[User:ClueBot III|ClueBot III]] and [[User:lowercase sigmabot III|lowercase sigmabot III]], the two bots in current use for automated archiving, are similar in their behaviour, but have some differences in terms of features they implement and limitations on their use:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! 
! lowercase sigmabot III
! ClueBot III
|-
! style=text-align:left; | Number of talk pages in use on
| [https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=2&name=MiszaBot%2Fconfig ~41,500]
| [https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=2&name=ClueBot+III%2FArchiveThis ~12,400]
|-
! style=text-align:left; | Index of archives?
| {{maybe|[[#Archive indexing|requires additional bot]]}}
| {{yes|[[User:ClueBot_III/Documentation#Index_generation|Yes]]}}
|-
! style=text-align:left; | Automatically repair links to discussions when archiving?
| {{no}}
| {{yes|[[User:ClueBot_III#Keeping_linked|Yes]] ([[Special:Diff/918449395|example]])}}
|-
! style=text-align:left; | Initial delay before first archive
| Less than 24 hours (typically begins runs at [[UTC+00:00|00:00 UTC]] daily)
| Up to several days ({{History2|Talk:Creation Museum|2|example|201312090940}})
|-
! style=text-align:left; | Limitations
| [[User:Lowercase_sigmabot_III/Archive_HowTo#Missing_signatures|Will not archive sections without signatures]]
| [[User:ClueBot_III/Documentation#Keeping_linked|Not suitable for pages linked to by a number of pages in the order of thousands]] (for performance reasons)
|}

The following are example configurations to set up automatic archiving of an article talk page or user talk page. These configuration templates do not produce any visible output, so you should generally also include [[#For talk pages|a template]] such as {{tlx|Archives}} to provide readers with links to search and navigate the archives. These templates may also be configured with the parameters <code>bot</code> and <code>age</code> to include a message notifying readers that automatic archiving is taking place. For example: {{tlc|Archives|age{{=}}90|bot{{=}}[[User:ClueBot III#How to archive your page|ClueBot III]]}}.

=== Example with sequentially numbered archives ===

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="2" | Sequentially numbered archives
|-
! [[User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo|Lowercase sigmabot III]] !! [[User:ClueBot III#How to archive your page|ClueBot III]]
|- style="vertical-align:top;"
| <!-- This is intended to be able to be copied while you are viewing the page, not while editing. --><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
{{User:MiszaBot/config
| algo=old(90d)
| archive={{SUBST:#titleparts:{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}}}/Archive %(counter)d
| counter=1
| maxarchivesize=75K
| archiveheader={{Archive}}
| minthreadsleft=5
| minthreadstoarchive=2
}}</syntaxhighlight>
|| <!-- This is intended to be able to be copied while you are viewing the page, not while editing. --><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis
| age=2160
| archiveprefix={{SUBST:#titleparts:{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}}}/Archive
| numberstart=1
| maxarchsize=75000
| header={{Archive}}
| minkeepthreads=5
| minarchthreads=2
| format= %%i
}}</syntaxhighlight>
|}

Both of the above examples will create archive pages, as needed, starting with <code>''TalkPage''/Archive&nbsp;1</code> and continuing with <code>''TalkPage''/Archive&nbsp;2</code>, etc., when the current archive page grows to more than 75,000 bytes. Only sections with dates that are older than 90 days (2,160 hours) will be archived, although the five sections with the most recent contributions will be retained on the talk page no matter how long ago the last contribution was added. If archives for the page already exist, then set the counter/numberstart parameter to the next archive number in the series.

{{anchor|FULLPAGENAME}}Warning: the magic word '''<nowiki>{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}</nowiki>''' is replaced by the talk page name when the template is saved to a talk page. However some punctuation characters that can appear in a page name (<code>"&'</code>) are replaced by HTML character codes that are not recognised by the bots (see [[:mediawikiwiki:Manual:PAGENAMEE encoding#PAGENAME]] for details about these and other characters). For example <code>'</code> is replaced with <code>&#39&#59;</code> (so if the bot is to work then <code>&#39&#59;</code> must be replaced with <code>'</code>). This can be circumvented by using <code><nowiki>{{SUBST:#titleparts:{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}}}</nowiki></code> to automatically sort the encoding.

=== Example with archives by year and month ===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="2" | Archives by year/month
|-
! [[User:lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo|lowercase sigmabot III]] !! [[User:ClueBot III#How to archive your page|ClueBot III]]
|- style="vertical-align:top;"
|
Note: In this configuration lowercase sigmabot III puts threads into archives based on the last date in each thread. Here is an example of it splitting an archiving task of 185 threads into {{Contribs2|lowercase sigmabot III|57|54 YYYY/Month based archives|201312042104}}.
||
Note: Each time ClueBot III runs it places threads in a ''single'' archive which is the YYYY/Month of (NOW - age). If you are starting archiving with a backlog this will result in a ''single file'' with all of your old threads older than <code>age</code>. ClueBot III does not appear to run every single day. Thus, even when archiving has been running for a while, some threads may end up in an archive that is one month later than when they were last edited.<br />
|- style="vertical-align:top;"
| <!-- This is intended to be able to be copied while you are viewing the page, not while editing. --><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
{{User:MiszaBot/config
| algo=old(90d)
| archive={{SUBST:#titleparts:{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}}}/Archives/%(year)d/%(monthname)s
| minthreadsleft=4
| minthreadstoarchive=2
}}</syntaxhighlight>
|| <!-- This is intended to be able to be copied while you are viewing the page, not while editing. --><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis
| age=2160
| archiveprefix={{SUBST:#titleparts:{{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}}}}/Archives/
| minkeepthreads=4
| minarchthreads=2
| format=Y/F
}}</syntaxhighlight>
|-
| colspan="2" |Both of the above examples will create archive pages, as needed, with names similar to <code>YourPage/Archives/June</code>, <code>YourPage/Archives/July</code>, etc. Only sections with dates that are older than 90 days (2,160 hours) will be archived in these examples.
|}

=== Bot and config details ===
The configuration template for lowercase sigmabot III is still named {{tlu|User:MiszaBot/config}} even though the original bots, [[User:MiszaBot I|MiszaBot I]], [[User:MiszaBot II|MiszaBot II]], and [[User:MiszaBot III|MiszaBot III]], are no longer active.

The best age for threads to be archived will vary, depending on talk page activity. The purpose of archiving article talk pages should be to remove stale discussions, not to stifle discussion. Article talk page threads should not typically be archived in less than 30 days except for very busy talk pages.

The <code>maxarchivesize</code>/<code>maxarchsize</code> parameter determines how large each archive is allowed to grow before a new archive is started. Keeping this value larger than a typical talk page allows the archives to be browsed more easily, but increases page load times. Each individual archive should not be larger than 512kB, because this may cause accessibility problems for some devices. Because a large batch of threads can "overshoot" the <code>maxarch[ive]size</code> parameter, the parameter should always be set lower than the maximum acceptable archive size.

=== Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage ===
One limitation of the way automatic archival instructions are set up is how page moves will easily break the functionality. For several reasons, the bots will generally only archive to subpages; that is, the archive must reside as one or more subpages to the talk page in question.

When a page is renamed (moved) and the user forgets to also update the bot instructions, this means that no further archiving will take place (until the bot instructions are updated manually). To facilitate identifying cases where archiving is interrupted, the [[:Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage]] was created. 

If your talk page isn't archiving properly, you might want to check this category. If your page is included, this indicates that the specified archive pages are incorrect.