Help:Archiving a talk page/Details

Naming

Two common methods of naming archives are sequential and chronological. Archive navigation templates use assumptions about the page names to locate archives. These templates will not automatically list subpages with unusual names.

Sequential

The most common, and easiest, method is sequentially numbered archives. 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 would be named User talk:Example/Archive 1

Talk page templates that automatically detect archives will ignore numbers that are:

zero
negative
not whole numbers
out of sequence

Chronological

The second common method of naming archive pages is by year and month. With this method archive pages are typically named Talk:YourPage/Archives/2013/June, Talk:YourPage/Archives/2013/July, etc. Some things are more complex with this method of naming. When using this naming scheme the subpages should use /Archives/ not /Archive/ as some of the navigation templates rely on Archives being plural.

Manual archiving

Cut and paste procedure

Simplified procedure for archiving

Edit the talk page, copying material you wish to archive to your computer's clipboard.
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.
Searching should say that this page does not exist. Click the provided link to create/start it.
Paste the clipboard contents into this archive and add {{Talk archive}} to the top and bottom of the code. Publish the new archive.
Delete copied material from main talk page with edit summary mentioning the name of the new archive.
If an archive box doesn't already exist on the main talk page, add the line {{Archives}} below the WikiProject tags and publish. (This will not be necessary if the main talk page already contains the line {{Talk header}}, since this template automatically contains a list of archives).

That is it, you are finished!

Step-by-step procedure

Click on the Edit source tab for the talk page you wish to archive.
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+X, ⌘ Cmd+X for Mac). The text will then be copied to your clipboard. Any WikiProject header templates should remain on the main talk page and should not be cut and pasted to an archive page.
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.
- If you're making a topical archive, use the name of the topic, for example [[/Place of birth debate]].
- 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]].
- If there are no archives yet, call it [[/Archive 1]].
- Archive links can be conveniently placed in an archive template (How to do this is described in the archive box section below)
Click Publish changes. (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.
Open the newly created subpage by clicking the red link. Paste the old discussions from your clipboard into the edit box.
Add {{Talk archive}} 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.
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 Automated archiving.
Publish changes. You have now created an archive.

Semi-automated procedure

OneClickArchiver and Archy McArchface are userscripts designed to simplify the above manual procedure. Instead of manually copying and pasting the text, these script allows you to simply check which sections you wish to archive and specify a page to archive the selected sections to.

Other manual procedures

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

Other procedures

This page lists alternative procedures for archiving a talk page that are generally no longer used. Note that if you have used the page move procedure on your user talk page, those pages do not qualify for speedy deletion by user request.

Move procedure

Subpage archives can be created by moving the talk page to a subpage.
Add {{talk archive}} to the top and bottom of the archived page. This adds a notice explaining that the page is an archive, and links back to the main talk page.
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 navigation templates section.
Alter the redirect link on the now empty talk page into an ordinary link so that the Archive can be found by clicking on the link. It is probably best to place the link into an archive template (How to do this is described in the archive box section).
Cut and paste any WikiProject header templates from the archive page back to the new talk page.
Copy discussions that are still active back to the original talk page. If the active discussions are large, as an alternative, copy the section headers of the active discussions onto the new page and provide a link to the same section in the archive e.g.:

Archive standards

See Wikipedia talk:How to archive a talk page/Archive 1#Archive standards for earlier discussions on this topic

Permanent link archives method

With this method, instead of copying discussions to a separate page, you simply provide a link to an earlier version of the page. You can make the links with the {{oldid2}} and {{oldid}} templates. These pages do not show up in search engines, as they are dynamically generated.

Go to the talk page you wish to archive and click on permanent link in the toolbox section of the left sidebar. Alternatively, go to the page history of the talk page and select the revision you want to use.
Copy the complete URL from the navigation bar of your web browser.
Edit the talk page and delete the text you want to archive. While you're still in the edit window, make a link to the URL you copied at the top. Keep in mind that syntax for full URL links is different than for Wikilinks. Here is an example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:How_to_archive_a_Talk_page&oldid=1709131 Archive 1]: June 2004 – May 2005
(You don't need the https: prefix – it is added automatically).
Save. You have now archived a talk page.

You can make the link shorter, and hence keep the wikitext of the page more readable, by replacing the path to the page with a {{fullurl}} link, leaving the "oldid" section at the end. For example, the link given above could be replaced by this:

which would display as Archive 1.

Since October 2011, you can instead make a normal wikilink to Special:PermanentLink:

[[Special:Permalink/1709131|Archive 1]]

which displays as Archive 1.

Or, you can write more primitively as

<span class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|oldid=1709131}} Archive 1]</span>

which displays as Archive 1. The <span> tags, if used, prevent the "external link" icon from appearing.