View source for Template talk:Talk header

{{talk header}}
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{{Old XfD multi|collapse=yes
| date      = 18 September 2005 
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| date2      = 2 October 2005 
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| date3     = 16 February 2006
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| date4     = 28 December 2006
| result4   = '''Keep'''
| link4     = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_December_28#Template:Talkheader

| date5     = 8 March 2009
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| link5     = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_March_8#Template:Talkheader

| date6     = 17 August 2017
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{{User:MiszaBot/config
| algo                = old(120d)
| archive             = Template talk:Talk header/Archive %(counter)d
| counter             = 11
| maxarchivesize      = 150K
| archiveheader       = {{Automatic archive navigator}}
| minthreadstoarchive = 1
| minthreadsleft      = 4
}}
{{User:HBC Archive Indexerbot/OptIn
|target=Template talk:Talk header/Archive index
|mask=Template talk:Talk header/Archive <#>
|leading_zeros=0
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== Proposal to drop archiving params ==

This is a proposal to drop the four archiving params (a.k.a. bot-notice params) {{para|bot}}, {{para|age}}, {{para|units}} and {{para|minthreadsleft}}. We can get the same information from the MiszaBot/config with more accuracy without these four params, and at the same time, generate a bot notice for all the pages that have a Talk page header but currently lack these params.

Up till now, the four archive-related params have been responsible for the bot notice seen optionally below the archive search box, and still are in override mode. However, they only control the notice, and do not affect whether or how archiving is actually carried out on the page, which is instead specified by template [[User:MiszaBot/config]]. In fact, the template bot-notice params and the MiszaBot config often get out of sync, leading to a misleading notice displayed in the Talk page header.

I've just released a new version of [[Template:Talk header]] which generates the bot notice below the search box automatically without parameters; any page having a MiszaBot/config and lacking the bot-notice params will now show the notice. However, if both a MiszaBot/config *and* bot notice-params are present, then the latter act as an override, and in many cases this means that the correct values determined by the new template are overridden by incorrect or out-of-sync user-supplied bot notice params. Pages that formerly had no bot notice, now have them if they have archiving configured; for example, see [[Talk:2017]] or [[Talk:Traditional marriage]].
lots more examples [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22discussing+improvements%22++insource%3AMiszaBot+-insource%3A%22age%3D%22&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns1=1&searchToken=a7ha8zn9r8ezjifejw68na3lf here].

I don't currently see a reason to keep the four bot-notice params {{para|bot}}, {{para|age}}, {{para|units}} and {{para|minthreadsleft}}, and I think they should all be deleted; 1) because they are no longer needed, and 2) in order to stop generating misleading bot notices. We should just let the template calculate the notice.  Perhaps there might be a reason to sometimes suppress the bot notice; in that case we should replace the four params with a new one: {{para|bot-notice|none}}. Another reason to keep the four params, might be if there are other archiving schemes currently in use that employ some configuration other than MiszaBot/config <u>or Cluebot III's config</u>; in that case, either the template should be upgraded to recognize the other schemes, or we should just keep the params for those cases. Feedback sought and appreciated. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC) <small></small>updated by [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:54, 29 February 2024 (UTC)<small></small>
: This proposal is '''linked from [[WP:VPR#Feedback sought for proposal to drop archival bot notice params from Template:Talk header|WP:VPR]]''' with an expiration 3 weeks from now, to allow sufficient time for this to air. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 10:40, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

=== What about Template:Archives ===

{{ping|Mathglot}} Would it be worthwhile to add this functionality to [[Template:Archives]] as well? [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 23:30, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
: [[User:Tollens|Tollens]], I had just noticed that template during the updates for this one, and had the same thought. That said, let's give this one a chance to air, and if there's no strong objections to it here, then I think your idea makes good sense as a follow-on change. <small>P.S. no ping needed; I'm subscribed. </small> [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 23:47, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems fine so long as it works as advertised for both bot archival templates. Automates a step that is otherwise easy to forget when archiving needs to be tweaked and no real downsides. I presume if there were a case where the params had been deliberately kept blank for some reason, the auto-population would have already drawn a complaint. [[Special:Contributions/184.152.68.190|184.152.68.190]] ([[User talk:184.152.68.190|talk]]) 03:36, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

'''Support''' - yes, if you want to contribute by writing a script/bot to get the information straight from the source, letting us bypass a manual element that mostly introduces a source of errors, this is of course very welcome! [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 12:00, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
: I have something in the [[Template:Archives/sandbox|sandbox]] there, but it's not working yet. I basically got lost in a twisty little maze of curlies, all alike, and trying to fight my way out. Not sure when or if I'll get back to it, but it should point the way if someone else wants to have a look. At least the new code is comprehensible due to indentation, but I'm probably missing a curly higher up someplace. No new script needed, by the way; it calls the same parsing template developed for the solution here. Currently, it's a subtemplate of [[Template:Talk header]], but if we use it from two places, maybe it should be spun off into its own root page. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 21:54, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
::I'm happy to give it a go – what exactly was the issue? It looks like a bad parameter was being used for the minimum number of threads to keep, but other than that I can't see anything wrong. Curlies all seem to match up far as I can tell. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 22:31, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:::Made a couple other tweaks. As an aside, do we want to move the information about the specific archival bot and minimum threads to a tooltip as was done with [[Template:Talk header]]? I know I've used [[Template:Archives]] with only the age parameter on my user talk for quite some time and would prefer to keep it appearing that way or similar rather than having the other information be forced to display. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 23:20, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:::: Thanks; as long as it's just in the sandbox, you can do pretty much what you like. I'll have to go look again to remind myself what the problem was.  But a discussion section should probably be started there, linking/summarizing this one, to explain what it is that is being discussed. That box has had a different presentation for a long time, and any move of info to a tooltip should probably get consensus there, imho. Or now that I think about it, as it concerns two templates (maybe more?) perhaps at a more centralized venue, like [[Help talk:Archiving a talk page]]. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
:::: Noticed your changes—thanks for that—and added a couple more. Wanted to add some test cases, but if this holds up, and there are no objections from regulars at the Talk page there, I think this would be a beneficial change, and keep the two templates relatively in sync. The same test cases as found at [[Template:Talk header/testcases4#B. Testing with the subtemplate]] but tested ''in situ'' should work here as well. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 12:00, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

=== Proposal to drop archiving params – break ===

How about [[User:ClueBot III|ClueBot III]]? [[User:Graham87|Graham87]] ([[User talk:Graham87|talk]]) 04:54, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
: Thanks, wasn't aware it used a different config; it can be added. Do you know of any others? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
:: {{u|Graham87}}, it supports Cluebot_III configs now; any other bots you know of that need to be supported? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:34, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
:::{{replyto|Mathglot}} Nope, that's it. Your ping didn't work by the way, probably because of the [[Special:Diff/1210993279|shuffling around of messages]]. While I'm thinking about it I support removal of the now-redundant parameters; it means I won't have to make occasional updates of archiving bot names like [[Special:Diff/1016857614|this]] ([[Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FRadical Bot|a previous bot run]] caught many of them, but not everything). [[User:Graham87|Graham87]] ([[User talk:Graham87|talk]]) 09:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
This sounds like a solid improvement. It's too bad we didn't initially think of it when [[Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2021_May_13#Template:Auto_archiving_notice|merging in auto archive notice]] back in 2021, as it may generate a few complaints about watchlist clutter, but I think it'll be worth it to remove the [[don't repeat yourself|duplicative information]], so I support. <span style="border:3px outset;border-radius:8pt 0;padding:1px 5px;background:linear-gradient(6rad,#86c,#2b9)">[[User:Sdkb|<span style="color:#FFF;text-decoration:inherit;font:1em Lucida Sans">Sdkb</span>]]</span> <sup>[[User talk:Sdkb|'''talk''']]</sup> 05:15, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I think there is value in displaying such data - but they'd need to be the actual archive data and thus be displayed from [[User:MiszaBot/config]]. So yeah, remove 'em from this template. [[User:Jo-Jo Eumerus|Jo-Jo Eumerus]] ([[User talk:Jo-Jo Eumerus|talk]]) 07:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
: Yes, it is displaying actual archive data pulled from the config. Currently, either MiszaBot, or Cluebot, whichever one it finds on the page. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
:: For the (rare) talk pages that have more than one archive config on the page, see [[#Pages with two bot configs]]. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 20:37, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
::: (That's archived [[/Archive 11#Pages with two bot configs|here]].) [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 18:56, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

=== how and when to drop the bot notice params ===

This was supposed to run three weeks according to the notice pointing here from [[WP:VPT]], but for some reason, the section there got archived, even with a {{tl|DNAU}} in place. But it was there for over two weeks, and no objection was registered. Here's what it would take, imho, to drop the four bot notice params from the {{tl|Talk page header}} template:
# make sure interested parties here are good to go with this; handle any concerns
# remove params {{para|archive_bot}}, {{para|archive_age}}, {{para|archive_units}}, {{para|minthreadsleft}} and their aliases from the template code, except for the unknown parameter invocation at the bottom. The effect will be that Talk pages currently containing these params will begin displaying data directly from the config params (if any) and stop overriding the actual configured values with the values given in the params.  Pages having no archiving will stop displaying false notices. The parameters will still exist, but have no effect.
# update the doc, removing the four from the main Parameters section but adding a temporary deprecated notice for some period (a year?)
# at some point (no hurry), request a bot to remove deprecated params from transclusions of {{Tl|Talk header}}; maybe [[WP:AWB]] can do this with an appropriate regex.
# Once the bot is complete (do Advanced search to make sure), remove the params from the unknown parameter invocation at the bottom.
# Remove the doc page deprecated params notice.
The first three should be done whenever we are ready, which I think is now; unless there is some objection.
The last three are optional, but it makes sense to do them, and will declutter the template code and the doc.
The section above on {{slink||minimum number of sections archived}}, and in general, anything regarding what wording to use in the notice is completely independent from dropping the bot params, and the two processes may continue independently without taking the other into consideration. Probably subsections 3 and 4 should be broken out into a new, top-level discussion section about new wording, because they aren't really related to the dynamic bot notice topic at all. {{ec}} [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 03:01, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
:7 – Spot check some cases in Preview mode (see tests at [[Template:Talk header/testcases2]]) [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 05:52, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
:8 – (optional) consider dropping the deprecated params check driving inclusion in [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters]], or keeping it, as a monitoring aid. See below. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 03:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
: Two subsections moved to {{slink||New and modified bot notice wording proposals}}. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:21, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
:: FWIW, [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Feedback_sought_for_proposal_to_drop_archival_bot_notice_params_from_Template:Talk_header]] is there when I looked just now. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 13:59, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
::: Hi Capn, yes, I see it; not sure what you meant to say about the VPR thread.
::: As far as the steps above, it's been a month since the auto-generation of the bot notice was installed on 29 Feb., and I haven't seen any response, so that's a good sign that probably nobody even noticed, and at a minimum, we didn't break anything because that would've caused howls right away. I think we can move on to step 2, at least, when someone is available to do it. I'll be away starting in a few days and I don't want to start something now that might break and require attention just when I'll have no time for it. I'll have wifi occasionally for questions while away, but I wouldn't attempt template coding from my phone. Of course, there is nothing stopping anyone else from updating it who feels like doing so. Steps 4 & 5 can even be ignored forever; the downside is that there would be stale code in the template that does nothing, which is inelegant and makes it harder for other template editors to maintain it or add new functionality, so it's still a good idea to do those steps at some point, if possible. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 00:01, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
:[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], if it helps I'm happy to take care of 4.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1713296192838:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 19:36, 16 April 2024 (UTC)</span>
:: [[User:Qwerfjkl|Qwerfjkl]], yes that would help, thank you, with the caveat of revisiting dependencies in the numbered steps first. I believe the simple, 1–6 enumeration is too simplistic, and a linear sequence doesn't properly represent interdependencies among them. I believe 5 & 6 must follow 4, but 4 is independent of 2 & 3, and may be done before, after, or simultaneously with 2+3. In addition, 3 could be done before 2, to discourage having to run 4 twice.  In fact, maybe the sequence should be: 3 (without the temp deprecated notice), followed by 2 and/or 4 in any order, followed by dependencies of 4. Do you agree? If so, I'll update the doc, and then we can move on the rest, with your assistance at your convenience. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 23:23, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
:::[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], sure, that sounds good to me.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1713332921833:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 05:48, 17 April 2024 (UTC)</span>
:: Or maybe we should keep a small deprecated notice, as some users will remember the old params and wonder what happaned to them? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 23:25, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
* Step 3 done (remove four bot notice params from doc). Next up: remove from template (will require sandbox changes and testing first). [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 07:58, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
**[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], let me know when you want me to file a BRFA for this.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1714315801835:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 14:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)</span>
**: {{u|Qwerfjkl}}, thanks for the reminder. Step 3 (remove from /doc) is partially done: those params have been grayed out and tagged as deprecated in the doc. I just created a new sandbox with the four params stripped out per step 2 ([[Special:Diff/1219359281/1221261215|diff]]), and that is now ready for testing. The removal was quite straightforward, but because of [[WP:THOSEDAMNCURLIES]] and the high visibility of the template, I want to take this slow and easy, and maybe get more eyeballs on it before releasing a change of this magnitude. (I'm scattered all over, so feel free to remind again if this stagnates.) Thanks, [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 21:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
**: [[Template:Talk header/testcases4|Test cases]] A–1 to A–5 and A2–1 to A2–10 completed successfully. These are all ExpandTempates tests. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 00:07, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
**: So, I'm happy with the current state of testing, and it looks like this is ready to be moved to live. I will do so shortly, but in an abundance of caution due to the high visibility, I'm pinging {{ping|Primefac|Trialpears|MSGJ}} to see if there are any objections. In a nutshell, if released to live this change will implement step 2 above (and open the way to step 4, the bot run which {{u|Qwerfjkl}} kindly offered to take on). Not releasing it would mean that transclusions of {{tl|Talk header}} that use these bot params on Talk pages would have possibly incorrect archival information displayed in the Talk header, depending on whether the param values happen to be in sync with the actual archive config or not. If I don't hear anything in a few days, I'll release it. Regardless of feedback, I take full responsibility for the forthcoming release, and any errors that result from it are mine alone.  Thanks, [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 20:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
**:: {{Done}}. This (step 2) is now moved to live. Let's wait a few days more to see if there are any problem reports, and if not, we can move ahead with the bot. {{u|Aidan9382}}, would you mind monitoring for any problem reports? If they come up in the next three to four days, I can handle it, but after that, I may have spotty wi-fi for a few weeks, so if reports come in later requiring a revert, would you mind doing the revert for me? {{u|Qwerfjkl}}, if all goes well, I'll leave the bot step in your hands, and on your own timetable. Thanks, [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:49, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
**:::I'd be happy to look out for any reports, though what change(s) would I be reverting and what could be the potential issue? [[User:Aidan9382|Aidan9382]] <sub>([[User talk:Aidan9382|talk]])</sub> 06:19, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
**:::: Thanks, [[User:Aidan9382|Aidan]]. The edit to revert would be rev. [[Special:Diff/1223139724‎|1223139724‎]] of 04:32, 10 May 2024, which removes the four archiving params {{para|archive_bot}}, {{para|archive_age}}, {{para|archive_units}}, and {{para|minthreadsleft}} from the set of parameters in the template. It's hard to know what issue might turn up, but likely it would be related to the presence (or absence?) of one of those parameters that hasn't been foreseen in any of the test cases, so I can't know for sure. But if something does turn up, I imagine we'll likely hear about it here eventually. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 06:48, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
**:::[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], it's been around a week. Any issues with moving forward with the bot work?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1715887046704:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 19:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC)</span>
**:::: None I am aware of; I think we are good to go. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:20, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
**:::::[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], sorry for the delay on this. Am I correct that this is just a straight removal of those 4 parameters from all uses of {{t|Talk header}}, and there's nothing else to consider?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1717603732607:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 16:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)</span>
**:::::: No worries, there's no particular urgency. And yes, you're correct, as the template no longer looks at them at all (except for the param validation section, in order to avoid throwing an error on legacy transclusions that still use them). That said, if there are a lot of uses of those params, perhaps it's wise to do a small initial run to see if anyone squawks. It seems unlikely, but I suppose it's not impossible that some other template is using {{tl|Tmpv}} to gather the content of those params and do something with them. I'm probably worrying too much, and if you want to just go for it, I think we are pretty ready. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 18:53, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
**:::::::[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], {{BRFA filed|Qwerfjkl (bot) 30}}.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1717620738922:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 20:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)</span>
**:::::::: Nice, thanks. Monitoring the trials. Spot-checked about a dozen, and noticed it missed one param in [[Special:Diff/1227558730|this edit]] at [[Talk:Barack Obama]], and two in [[Special:Diff/1227559534|this]] at [[Talk:Acupuncture]]. Seems to be param {{para|units}} in both cases, plus {{para|bot}} in the latter case. I'm wondering if a leading blank is implicated. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 03:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
:┌───────────────────────────┘<br/>[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], I think the bot's taken care of as many of these as is possible to find with a simple search. If you make a tracking category I can run the bot on that.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1721314778387:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 14:59, 18 July 2024 (UTC)</span>
::For what it's worth, I find these watchlist-flooding edits annoying at scale, and would rather have bots wait until they have meaningful changes to make before pushing through site-wide changes like this. (Cf. [[WP:COSMETICBOT]].) –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 23:18, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
::: [[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]], bots provide a real service, making many small, repetitive, beneficial edits that would be very annoying and time-consuming for human editors to make. Each bot edit leaves a human editor with a bit more time to do something productive that requires some thought, and is more enjoyable and rewarding for the editor. Those are good reasons to support bot activity. That said, having bot edits flood your watchlist can be annoying, as well. Fortunately, you can easily fix that in a single procedure, by turning off bot edits in your watchlist, as described at [[Help:Watchlist#Options]]. That should permanently solve the problem for you, reduce the flooding (except when human editors do the same thing), and leave a lot more room on your Watchlist for actual, human edits that you'd prefer to see. The more these repetitive tasks can be offloaded from human to bot, the better your watchlist will be, and the more we can all concentrate on more productive tasks. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 01:09, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
::::Sure, but this particular bot action of removing a recently deprecated no-op parameter does not serve any urgent or very important purpose, and large-scale trivial bot editing also imposes an attention cost on many human editors site-wide. Again, please read [[WP:COSMETICBOT]]. "Just stop watching bots" is not good advice. Bots routinely screw things up.–[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 02:58, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
::::: Not sure what you mean by "{{xt|Bots routinely screw things up}}", but if you know of a specific problem with a particular bot, it would be helpful if you could raise a discussion at the talk page of the bot user, at least to report what your experience has been that was sub-par with that bot. If nobody tells them, they can't fix it. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:18, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::What I mean is, it's worth having human editors keep an eye on what bots are doing, because bot edits are not always improvements to the encyclopedia. It's certainly fine if some people want to ignore bot edits, but that't not really a good reason to flood watchlists of the others. Anyway, this particular example isn't too big a deal, but in general bot operators should read [[WP:COSMETICBOT]] and consider whether they can defer this type of edit and combine it with something substantive. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 13:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::::[[User:Jacobolus|Jacobolus]], I <i>could</i> monitor RecentChanges and only edit pages right after a normal edit, but that adds a huge burden on me for an otherwise trivial task.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1721405443975:Template_talkFTTCLNTalk_header" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;[[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 16:10, 19 July 2024 (UTC)</span>
::::::: In my experience, I find it much more worth keeping an eye on what humans are doing, because human edits are not always improvements to the encyclopedia. While I have reverted a handful of bot edits over time, the numbers are orders of magnitude lower than the number of human edits I have reverted for just cause. On an even smaller number of occasions I have discussed improvements with bot operators, and if you see a problem, you can, too. This is all somewhat o/t for this page, but could be useful at [[WT:BOTN]] if you see a general issue that you would like to raise there. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 16:39, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
:: Qwerfjkl, that sounds like a good idea; I'll look into it. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 00:45, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
:::[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], any update on this? [[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 19:04, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
::::[[User:Qwerfjkl|Qwerfjkl]] (or Mathglot), if you feel like merging [[Special:PermanentLink/1241008417|rev. 1241008417]] of the sandbox into the template it will add pages with the deprecated parameters to [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters]]. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 19:57, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
::::: I'll do some tests on that one tomorrow (concentrating on [[Template:Talk header/testcases4|page 4]]), but superficially (existing test cases) it seems fine. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 06:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
::::::@[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]]? [[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 16:10, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::: I have added [[Template:Talk header/testcases4#Testing categorization of pages using deprecated archiving parameters|these test cases]] for testing categorization of pages using deprecated archiving parameters, and will go through them tomorrow. A few spot checks while running through them all turned out as expected. Noticed one small thing at the Category page, which is that it didn't mention <code>minthreadsleft</code> but that is a minor, doc-level only issue, and in any case, that param never occurs singly so is extremely unlikely to be responsible for missing a category, even if not specifically coded for, because one of the other params will trigger the category. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:54, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::Oh, my bad, made a typo there on the category page. The actual template code does do minthreadsleft, not minthreadstoarchive, which was never a parameter in the first place. I've fixed it there and on the test cases page. I wouldn't expect that this change would possibly not work – it's just one call to a preexisting module that does this kind of check, copied from the example on its doc; I think this would be safe to merge. I see there's been a change made since I drafted that, so a revised version that can be directly copied over is [[Special:PermanentLink/1247345256|rev. 1247345256]]. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 22:34, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::: Darn, I just completed testing for all the new tests targeting this using rev. [[Special:PermanentLink/1247169007|1247169007]] (a copy of your rev. [[Special:PermanentLink/1241008417‎|1241008417‎]]) minutes before your recent round of changes  (all cases pass ''in situ'' and via ExpandTemplates) and was about to switch over and start doing regression. But if this is a new version, I guess I will have to do them again. Maybe I will just spot-check, and if they seem all right, will move over to regression. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 22:42, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::: I have been testing your recent version, and have gone through [[Template:Talk header/testcases4#Via Special:ExpandTemplates|tests D-1 – D-10]] (via Expandtempilates) and they all pass, and ''in situ'' tests E-1 – E-11 also pass. This is a good sign, and it only remains to go through regression tests now to make sure nothing is broken, and then it can be released. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 05:01, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::: Okay, regression looks good. I've been testing with rev. [[Special:Permalink/1247404890|1247404890]] which is equivalent to your [[Special:Permalink/1247345256|1247345256]] ([[Special:Diff/1247345256/1247404890|diff]]), and if there are no objections, I will release this to live. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 01:02, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::: Released. The [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters|category]] should populate shortly. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 10:06, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::@[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] I think the category should have populated by now, so I'm running the task. I think cases like [[Special:Diff/1249965244]] could be handled better i.e. displayed as 3 years (see [[#Archive timing information appearing in the talk header should be human readable]]). [[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 19:34, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::The task is complete. I've manually removed all the remaining usages, despite [[User talk:Vestrian24Bio]] still showing in [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters|the category]]. Safe to remove the check for deprecated parameters? [[User:SWinxy|SWinxy]] ([[User talk:SWinxy|talk]]) 18:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::: Thanks. Yes, it is safe, and we are now at step 5 of [[#how and when to drop the bot notice params|the list]], but it is not urgent, and no one will see any ill effects from not doing it. It's just superfluous code now. It's up to the community to prioritize it, but personally, I would put it off until some other tasks are done first, for example, I would put the task mentioned by [[User:Qwerfjkl|Qwerfjkl]] at a higher priority, and do that one next. (And there are other tasks pending.) [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 01:06, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::::I've just removed a few more pages from the category, so I think the tracking should remain in place for a while. It doesn't do any harm, and it wouldn't suprise me if there's still going to be old pages popping up in the category every now and then. IIRC, template-populated categories can be weird like that sometimes. --[[User:Rchard2scout|rchard2scout]] ([[User talk:Rchard2scout|talk]]) 13:58, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::::::I've populated the category with what I ''think'' are all the ones that didn't come up on their own. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 04:43, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::::::It looks like the category is still being populated, currently at 155 pages. @[[User:Qwerfjkl|Qwerfjkl]], is it possible to re-run the bot task? --[[User:Rchard2scout|rchard2scout]] ([[User talk:Rchard2scout|talk]]) 08:39, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::::::::@[[User:Rchard2scout|Rchard2scout]], I think it'd be best to wait a week or two and then clear out the category. [[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 08:49, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
<!--{{od|::::::::::::::::::}}-->
That was me – I ran a script to null-edit all the pages that didn't go in on their own so I think that should be all of them. Probably still best to wait a week or two as Qwerfjkl suggests above just in case, but I don't expect there to be any more. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 15:12, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I see 179 of them in [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters]]. I spot-checked 18 of them in the A's, B's and C's and most come from redirects (4 from {{tl|talkheader}}, 11 from {{tl|Talkheader}}, 1 from {{tl|Talk page header}}; but also 2 from {{tl|Talk header}}). Fwiw, I also noted that the majority have param {{para|archive_units|year}}; not sure if that is relevant, but it seems atypical so thought I'd mention it. Also, 7 of them have no archives (at least, not any named in the standard fashion) and that seemed atypical also, although perhaps not if people are just copying the invocation they see on some other page. Maybe we don't care and can just move ahead? If it continues to be populated after it is cleared out and the params are removed from the template, it will be seen in preview mode but not after publication, and there will be a few added to the category that can be dealt with manually from time to time, or not at all. There will be no templates anymore with the deprecated usage to copy from, so its likely new usage of the deprecated params will go way down. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:01, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

:@[[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]], I ran the bot again and cleared the category (except for a testcases page). [[User:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#1d9ffc; color:white; padding:5px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">Qwerfjkl</span>]][[User talk:Qwerfjkl|<span style="background:#79c0f2;color:white; padding:2px; box-shadow:darkgray 2px 2px 2px;">talk</span>]] 11:30, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
:: Looking good. The sandbox was busy with a version for testing the [[#Archive timing information appearing in the talk header should be human readable|§&nbsp;human readable duration]] stuff, so I just completed that to get it out of the way and free up the sandbox again. As that has just been released, I think we should wait a few days to monitor for comments or complaints and ensure all is well with that release, before installing the next one. Meanwhile, a new sandbox version with the deprecated params removed from the param validation section can be installed, and we can start testing it. I think I already have test cases for it, but if not, they will be easy to write. Thanks, [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 07:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
::: {{done}}. 
::: All [[Template:Talk header/testcases2|test cases]] for removal of bot notice params from param validation passed, and this version has been released to live. This change does not affect display of the Talk header when the page is rendered regardless whether invalid params are used or not, but the new version will now display a red error message (in Preview mode only) if any of the old bot notice params are used. This completes this [[Template talk:Talk header#Proposal to drop archiving params|Proposal to drop archiving params]]. It's been a long road, interspersed with a few other, related issues that paused or affected completion of this task (including unrelated IRL stuff on my end) and I wanted to thank everyone involved for their patience, contributions, and forbearance, especially {{u|Tollens}} and {{u|Qwerfjkl}} without whom this would still not be finished. Many thanks! [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 05:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
:::: I have added an (optional) step 8 above, about dropping the code for categorization into [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters]]. This is the category for pages that have deprecated (and now removed) parameters. Imho, we should not remove it now, as it helps us find future problems, and makes it easy to run the bot against transgressors if need be. I see no reason to remove this now and would recommend keeping it around for a year. There is little downside to not removing it at all. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 03:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

=== Is there a clear summary of the proposal / intended change? ===

I don't really understand what is being proposed here, what has been implemented so far, what will be implemented in the future, etc.

I would strongly recommend that this template:

# Should not show the name of the archive bot by default, or ideally not at all. That information is a distracting reader-irrelevant internal implementation detail. At the very most, mention of the bot's name should be opt-in.
# Should show archive time in units rounded so that the number is a small value. That is, we should show "3 months" instead of "90 days", "2 years" instead of "730 days", etc.
# Should skip describing the min threads to archive, min threads left, max archive size, etc. Nobody who is just reading the talk page does or should care about these

In general, any very widely used talk page template should strongly prioritize eliminating, hiding, and minimizing the space use and distraction of non-essential information. Adding gratuitous configuration metadata is a reader hostile regression. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 22:06, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

:All information aside from archive time on this one is only located in a tooltip (you can see an example on this page's header if you hover over "Auto-archiving period"), so in this case, unlike [[Template:Archives]], I don't see the harm here because it's only visible when you're looking for it. I agree completely with your second point. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 22:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
::Got it. I didn't realize it was a tooltip. (The tooltip seems fine!) I was coming here after seeing the change to {{template|archives}}, where the bot name is now presented by default on every talk page using that template. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 22:22, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
::@[[User:Tollens|Tollens]] I'm not sure if this was different when you answered, but this is now no longer true. I have explicitly set "{{code|1={{!}}archive_age=3 {{!}}archive_units=years}}" on the template and in the body of the banner (not the tooltip) it says "Auto-archiving period: 1095 days", which was automatically pulled from the bot config.
::This is a serious bug in my opinion, a reader hostile regression made without consensus. It must be fixed or reverted. The date must either (a) be automatically converted to a human-accessible unit, or (b) the explicit template parameters must be respected. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 20:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
::: First off, this discussion / these discussions are extremely hard to follow, with progress made in many places at once, including this sub-discussion that's placed in the middle of something from April. I'll simply start a new header below to say my piece, and let everybody decide for themselves how relevant it is to what various work they're currently doing. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 05:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC) 
: Agree with your 2nd point here, but that is another proposal that should start off a new, top- level section as a discussion or edit request. Imho, it’s not a good idea to keep piggy-backing on additional requests onto an earlier request, which isn’t completed yet, especially in the case of a template with such high usage and visibility. We need to let this one complete, without additional complications. That doesn’t mean you can’t start another section now as it can be discussed and implemented completely independently from the current request. Does that help? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 00:28, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

== New and modified bot notice wording proposals ==
<!-- [[User:DoNotArchiveUntil]] 17:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1735665673}}
{{hatnote|Subsections {{slink||Convert Cluebot hours to days?}} and {{slink||minimum number of sections archived}} refactored here, as they are independent of the previous section.}}

=== Convert Cluebot hours to days? ===

One thing that becomes evident with this change, is the somewhat less friendly units used by Cluebot; how long is 2880 hours, anyway? This is not a big deal, but as long as we are talking about these changes, it would be an easy fix to display the hourly total as days (approx. days, decimal days, rounded days; preference?) if it exceeds some threshold number of hours. I think after 96 hours, I pretty much lose it, not sure about anybody else. If you want to see some live examples, check out the bot notice at any of these Talk pages which all use Cluebot: [[Talk:The Exorcist]], [[Talk:List of colors]], [[Talk:Toronto]], [[Talk:Switzerland]], [[Talk:Macedonia]]. We could display days in the notice, and exact hours in the Tooltip, if desired. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:48, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

:I'd suggest rounding anything over 23 hours. I can convert 36, 48, 72 hours, etc. in my head, but it takes some thought. Would rather see that in 1.5 days, 2 days, 3 days format. –[[User:Novem Linguae|<span style="color:blue">'''Novem Linguae'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:Novem Linguae|talk]])</small> 10:02, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
:Sure, this sounds fine. Even if it involves some loss of precision, I have a hard time conceiving of any situation where it would matter that a talk pages be archived at a large but precise number of hours. <span style="border:3px outset;border-radius:8pt 0;padding:1px 5px;background:linear-gradient(6rad,#86c,#2b9)">[[User:Sdkb|<span style="color:#FFF;text-decoration:inherit;font:1em Lucida Sans">Sdkb</span>]]</span> <sup>[[User talk:Sdkb|'''talk''']]</sup> 14:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
:: Especially as there's no way to know what kind of delay might be involved before the bot gets around to visiting the page. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 23:48, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
:::Delays should not be taken into account. If a page claims archiving will happen after 6 or 18 or 30 or 60 hours, we should probably say that even though the actual arching cadency is just once a day... Cheers [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 14:35, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:: {{done}}. A description of this new functionality can be found at {{slink|Template:Talk header|Archive bot notice|nopage=yes}}; please have a look and adjust as needed. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 07:02, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:::I would not round any hour figure lower than 72. Starting to round already at >23 feels unnecessarily aggressive. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 14:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:::: No worries; it's incredibly easy to change it to any figure that comes out of consensus here.  [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 21:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:::: {{tq|For archiving bots that use hours as the default units, they are converted to days, rounded to the nearest half-day}} This I take to mean ANY number is rounded to a multiple of 12 (half a day). I would suggest a more conservative start. Do not round any hours-number lower than 72 for starters, then let consensus drive rounding of lower numbers. The other way round assumes we will revisit the subject later. I think now is the only time you will hear voices to avoid rounding smaller numbers, so please consider this to be the consensus you'll get. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 09:11, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
::::: Thanks for pointing that out; I neglected to mention the > 23 threshold, so I tweaked the doc, which should be accurate now; sorry for the confusion. As far as what the threshold should be,  72 sounds fine, so does 96, so does 24; it's easily changeable and I have no strong preference myself. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 10:00, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
:::::: If my voice is the only voice with an opinion: start with 72 and change it if somebody asks for it. Not the other way round, partly because doing it that way in effect willfully ignores suggestions you are getting now. Why can't suggestions now hold equal weight to those that you (probably won't) get later? Thanks [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 14:04, 29 March 2024 (UTC) 
:::::::Any multiple of 24 hours should definitely be presented as X days; this is significantly more likely to be the intention than hours per se. Odd multiples of 12 hours should generally be presented as X.5 days, though maybe 12h or 36h can be left as exceptions. If someone has some weird value like 20 or 50 hours then maybe show it as hours. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 22:32, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

=== minimum number of sections archived ===
Related to this, there is one nugget of information you can configure the archive bots with, but wasn't possible to convey through the templates:

If you tell the bots to not archive until, say, 2 sections are eligible, then its possible for users to not understand why the bot isn't archiving. 

Say there are 5 talk sections. All are older than the number of days specified. But the settings say "keep at least four sections and only archive two or more sections at a time." This means no archiving is done for now, since you need a sixth new talk discussion in order to archive two of the stale discussions and still leave four on the page.

(PS. Configuring the bot to keep 4 sections is very useful since the table of content is per default only generated on pages with four sections. Configuring the bot to only archive two sections at a time is relatively useful to avoid cluttering the history page with lots of archival edits, which can come across as the bot being "too aggressive" in its cleaning)

'''Proposal:''' tweak this new wondrous automatic display of the actual bot settings to also tell the user if the bot will only archive two or more sections at a time. Specifically when {{para|minthreadstoarchive|2}} (or more). Cheers [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 12:09, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

:{{para|minthreadstoarchive}} is currently displayed in the tooltip (along with the specific bot that does the archiving). It's not ideal, but when we designed the merge, keeping the display very concise was a top concern (for good reason, given the tendency for talk page banner bloat), so that's what we went with. Thinking in terms of a talk page user, I can see why it might be useful to know the auto-archiving period, but it's harder to envision reasons why it would be helpful to know the minthreadstoarchive or the specific bot that does the archiving. <span style="border:3px outset;border-radius:8pt 0;padding:1px 5px;background:linear-gradient(6rad,#86c,#2b9)">[[User:Sdkb|<span style="color:#FFF;text-decoration:inherit;font:1em Lucida Sans">Sdkb</span>]]</span> <sup>[[User talk:Sdkb|'''talk''']]</sup> 20:30, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
: Capn, it would be a fairly easy upgrade to add what you are suggesting, but as Sdkb points out, it's already there in the tooltip, and I think the trade-off design of lean-and-mean visible part, and the rest of it in a tooltip was a good decision. Other than tooltips are not easily visible from mobile, not sure if there are other accessibility issues with tooltips; it had occurred to me that along with this change one might add alt text for screen readers, but I didn't want to overload the proposal, at least initially, with too much stuff. But it's something to consider, moving forward. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 21:31, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
: Cap'n, since you mentioned ''wondrous''—I also think it's pretty cool—I wanted to spread the credit where it's due. While in theory this could have been implemented earlier through use of a set of complex regular expressions, that would've been difficult to develop, test, and maintain, and might've been fragile. What really made the archival config auto-detection feasible here was the upgrade to [[Module:Template parameter value]] developed by {{u|Aidan9382}}, which in turn enabled construction of {{tl|HasTemplate}}. There is still some regex code in the [[Template:Talk header/archivebotparse|archive bot parser]] here, but it's straightforward and not the tangled mess it would've been had we not had access to this upgrade. While the Module upgrade was in progress, I didn't even imagine it being used here (had something else in mind) but after it was done, a little light turned on and I realized it was now possible, and not even difficult, to add the config detection and parsing. So that led in a pretty direct line to the changes here. I think the Module upgrade will have beneficial knock-on effects elsewhere, so spread a little love in Aidan's direction. Sdkb will recognize one opportunity in the somewhat clunky WikiProject detection in {{tl|find sources}} for domain selection, and I predict others will come to light.  [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 22:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
:: Okay at first [[User:Sdkb]] (and [[User:Mathglot]]), I thought you meant this functionality had been recently added. But looking at an example page [[Talk:Gravity (2013 film)]] I don't see it. The tooltip states "Discussions with timestamps are automatically archived by lowercase sigmabot III after 120 days of inactivity when more than 5 threads are present." There is no mention the bot will archive only when more than 1 thread is eligible; for this page, the param is set to {{para|minthreadstoarchive|2}} So a reader can be left completely bewildered and not understand why the bot "isn't working" when it isn't archiving the oldest section once a sixth discussion is started, when in fact, it IS working: to keep down the number of archival edits; it will only step in once a seventh discussion is started, if it can then archive two discussions in one sweep. It's just the information that is inadequate. This is the same as when the talk header template first was reworked - support for every param except {{para|minthreadstoarchive}}. Unless there's something strange going on and I don't see what you guys are seeing? (I'm using legacy Vector if that matters) Cheers [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 09:27, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
::: I see what you are saying, and all I can say is, the proposal that is the object of this discussion was, at least at first anyway, solely about replicating existing wording from whatever the template was doing before, and just making sure to get accurate values directly from the config and not from template parameters which often go out of sync. If the bot notice didn't say anything about minthreadstoarchive before, then it won't say anything about it after the change, either. I see your point about reader confusion, and for whatever reason, there hasn't been a decision to address that in the bot notice previously, so we aren't addressing it either, in order to stick to previous behavior as much as possible. 
::: My suggestion would be simply to start a new top-level discussion proposing your change. Then, regardless whether the bot config-detection function is kept or not kept, your proposal about minthreadstoarchive would stand on its own and could succeed independently. Or, you could just try a bold change and see if it sticks. That's my take; I wonder what Sdkb will say about this.  [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 09:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
::::Given that this is a TE-protected template with 500k+ transclusions, I wouldn't recommend bold editing. I'd be interested to see a concrete proposal (i.e. a mockup of the design you'd like) for displaying {{para|minthreadstoarchive}}, but as I said above, I'll be skeptical of its value (and more so the more prominent the display). <span style="border:3px outset;border-radius:8pt 0;padding:1px 5px;background:linear-gradient(6rad,#86c,#2b9)">[[User:Sdkb|<span style="color:#FFF;text-decoration:inherit;font:1em Lucida Sans">Sdkb</span>]]</span> <sup>[[User talk:Sdkb|'''talk''']]</sup> 16:29, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
{{od}}
You are claiming {{para|minthreadstoarchive}} is currently displayed in the tooltip. I don't see it. I am not asking for this parameter to appear in the template. Just the tooltip text. I don't see why this could be controversial or why I need to start a new discussion or create a mockup? (Unless you mean simple wording along the lines of, still using Gravity as my example; "Discussions with timestamps are automatically archived by lowercase sigmabot III after 120 days of inactivity when more than 5 threads are present if more than 1 thread is eligible for archiving.") I'm simply thinking that since you're already editing the relevant code and you are the editors with the relevant knowledge (if you can extract the other params you can extract this one), why not suggest fixing this once and for all... [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 16:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

:@[[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]], if you go to a page like [[Special:Permalink/1211627534|Talk:Algeria]] and hover your cursor over the text that says "Auto-archiving period", do you see the tooltip that reads {{tq|Discussions with timestamps are automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III after 90 days of inactivity when more than 4 threads are present}}? That's what we're referring to. Cheers, <span style="border:3px outset;border-radius:8pt 0;padding:1px 5px;background:linear-gradient(6rad,#86c,#2b9)">[[User:Sdkb|<span style="color:#FFF;text-decoration:inherit;font:1em Lucida Sans">Sdkb</span>]]</span> <sup>[[User talk:Sdkb|'''talk''']]</sup> 00:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
: Interesting; regarding Gravity: when I hover over Talk:Gravity's bot notice, I see it mentioning 365 days of inactivity and 10 threads; is that not what you see? The config hasn't been edited since [[Special:Diff/1194747260|January 10]], but it was 180/none before that. Did you mean a different page? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::I think CapnZapp is referring to a completely different thing than Mathglot and Sdkb here. There are two different parameters that relate to a number of threads – one (the one currently displayed) is for the number of threads which have to remain on the page after archiving (for example, if this parameter was 2 and there were 5 threads on the page, all of them old enough to archive, only 3 threads would be archived). The other one, which I think CapnZapp is referring to, is for the minimum number of threads that are allowed to be archived with a single edit by the bot (as another example, if that parameter was 2 and there was exactly one thread old enough to archive, the bot would not archive it at all, but once there were 2 or more eligible threads the bot would archive them all). [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 10:07, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::: Thanks for that clarification. Yes, agreed; but if the previous incarnation did not address that, should we be doing so? On the + side, strike while the iron is hot; on the - side, just trying to reproduce the original bot notice, which presumably had [[WP:CONS|consensus]] previously (even if [[WP:SILENTCONSENSUS|silent]]), without any significant changes, but more accurately. To the extent that a proposal represents a change to previous behavior, is this thread the right place to deal with it? I can see both views, but I wonder, given the visibility of the template, if additional changes to a highly visible template would require additional consensus? I don't know the answer to that question. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 10:39, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::: [[User:Sdkb|Sdkb]] I see it. I also see that the bot instructions for that particular revision has no {{para|minthreadstoarchive}} parameter set. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 16:03, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::: [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] I am indeed referring to {{para|minthreadstoarchive}} and not merely {{para|minthreadsleft}} which Talk header have had support for a while now. I ''think'' I have been consistently using minthreadstoarchive in my request but feel free to point out if I have accidentally mentioned a different parameter. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 16:07, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::::I agree that you've been using the correct parameter name – just trying to clear up the apparent confusion. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 17:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::::: So, if it uses both, how would you word that? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 20:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::::::I think that was what CapnZapp meant by their example: {{tq|"Discussions with timestamps are automatically archived by lowercase sigmabot III after 120 days of inactivity when more than 5 threads are present '''if more than 1 thread is eligible for archiving'''."}} (emphasis mine). [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 21:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::: [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]]: seeing that there's even confusion about which parameter we're discussing let me first ask you -respectfully- to make absolutely certain you understand the request I am making (instead of the request you might think I am making). To be clear, I am ''not'' asking for any visual change of the talk header template (and related templates). Only a more informative tooltip. Your caution to me suggests you might still think I'm asking for a more intrusive change than I am actually asking for. I honestly don't feel I need to make mockups  - the template's appearance will remain unchanged. I honestly don't see why we would need a whole new round of consensus - again, it's only the tooltip that in a minority of cases would convey a little bit more information. Using Gravity movie as my example, if a page's bot instructions contain {{para|minthreadstoarchive|2}} I would like the tooltip to say something along the lines of "...if more than 1 thread is eligible for archiving". As stated previously! {{pb}} I cannot do more than make sure I am using the right parameter name. I cannot help if people read that as referring to other parameters? Again, if y'all have any advice on how I can be more clear please advise - I thought I was ''crystal'' clear but apparently not so? [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 16:22, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::::I'd support just making this change. I don't think anyone will be upset by (or, for that matter, notice) a change that's only inside a tooltip. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 17:39, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::::Yes, they are very similarly named, and I think I got confused. Especially if it's just inside the Tooltip, I agree with Tollens that probably hardly anybody will even notice. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 20:31, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
::::: Parsing is working in the subtemplate [[Template:Talk header/archivebotparse/sandbox|sandbox]]; next is further testing and moving the subtemplate sandbox to live, deciding what wording you want, then we have to add the wording to the Talk header sandbox, add new test cases for it, and then move the new TPH sandbox to live. After that, similar for [[Template:Archives]]: new wording (not a tooltip), then sandbox and test it, and release to live. Both templates use the same parser. The blocking dependency now is deciding on the wording for [[Template:Talk header]], presumably in the tooltip. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:35, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
::::::I'd support CapnZapp's suggested "if more than X thread(s) is/are eligible for archiving" appended to the end of the existing tooltip. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 02:58, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
::::::: How about: "If X or more threads are eligible for archiving"; that will save having to add code for verb number agreement. Also, I think we should only generate it when X >= 2. When X=1, adding the phrase or not adding it describe identical constraints, so the X=1 case doesn't need to be shown, and it might even make it worse as viewers would probably have to pause and try to parse out what it means. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 05:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
::::::::Oh, right, of course – I forgot that archiving was when there were &geq; the number specified in the parameter, not >. Your wording looks good to me. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 06:10, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
::::::::: Only saying something when {{para|minthreadstoarchive|2}} (or more) was part of my original proposal, so, yeah. [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 17:31, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
:::::I would strongly recommend suppressing min threads to archive, even inside a tooltip. It's not reader-relevant information, even for the most pedantically config-obsessed readers. The only reason this parameter exists is to reduce the amount of archive-bot watchlist noise, and people only need to care about this parameter if a miconfiguration is causing some problem, either (a) if the bot is doing an excessive amount of archive edits which are distracting people by spamming their watchlists or (b) if the bot isn't archiving old threads for too long because the threshhold is too high. In either case it only comes up when someone is having a problem with it. It's otherwise unnecessary to know or care about the setting of this parameter. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 07:15, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
::::::The same is true (perhaps more so, even) of the specific bot doing the archiving. I don't see why we would not include all available information in a tooltip which will only be viewed by people wanting more information. It isn't as if it's cluttering up the page. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 07:25, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::::Leaving out the bot name also seems beneficial, but at least doesn't require coming up with the kinds of confusing phrases proposed above for min threads to archive. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 08:03, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
::::::::Then what do you intend to leave in the tooltip? I just don't see the harm in providing more information in a tooltip, even if I were to assume that nobody cares, which I don't necessarily think is true. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 08:04, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::I don't really care about the tooltip (getting the dates human readable is more important), but it seems substantially unnecessary overall. Try to remain focused to the extent possible on making changes which concretely benefit readers and cutting out every bit of extraneous stuff on highly used templates which doesn't directly benefit readers, rather than on just adding as many things as possible just for the sake of having more things. In aggregate the latter ends up being actively harmful. –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 08:20, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::: It isn't clear to me what it is you want; on the one hand, you say you don't care about the tooltip, but then you say it's unnecessary and we should cut extraneous stuff, and that it's harmful. In this or any template, of course we want to benefit readers, and it's hard to see how a tooltip is harmful to anybody: certainly not to the 60% of our users who are mobile and never see it, or to the other 40% who must actively move their mouse over it in order to activate the pop-up text. Who's getting harmed here? Finally, the tooltip has a few years longevity without objection, so I don't think its going away without a clear consensus to remove which would likely require a specific proposal in a new section and an Rfc. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 15:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::My point is that anyone adding material to widely viewed templates should try to be careful about what they add to make sure that it has significant value, because every additional bit of extra material that might benefit a few people also imposes a cost (distraction, confusion, etc.) on a large number of others. The bias should be toward being conservative, including fewer features, using less space, etc.
:::::::::::Putting stuff in a tooltip is significantly better than putting it elsewhere, but even within the tooltip try to consider whether each piece of information is really necessary, because the more information you cram in there, the harder it is to make sense of any particular piece. Try to put yourself in the position of a talk page reader. Do you ''really'' care about the "min threads to archive" setting on talk pages you visit? How often? How much of a burden is it to just look at the source if you do? –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 15:48, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::: Generally I agree with your philosophy of parsimony, but I don't care that much what is or isn't in the tooltip, as long as what is there is accurate, and under the previous design, often it was not, which is how this all got started. That said, I do mouse over the tooltip and like seeing the age and units, which I know I can rely on now as accurate with the latest changes to the template. The other bits of tooltip info don't bother me personally, and I don't care if they stay or go, but that's not up to me. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 16:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

==== Testing progress ====
This is developed and now in test mode. I tweaked the wording slightly which seemed to flow better. Here's a summary of status and pages involved:
* [[Template talk:Talk header#minimum number of sections archived|Functionality]] – description of requested change (in this section, above)
* [[Template:Talk header/archivebotparse/sandbox|Archive bot config parser sandbox]] – now parses minarchthreads/minthreadstoarchive
* [[Template:Talk header/sandbox]] – points to parser sandbox, and has new tooltip code added for  minarchthreads/minthreadstoarchive
* [[Template:Talk header/testcases4#Testing upgrade for minimum threads to archive|Testcases, tab 4]] – pre-existing and new tests for archiving notice functionality 
** test cases for  [[Template:Talk header/testcases4#Talk pages that use Miszabot config|Talk pages having a Miszabot config]] – no testcases yet; t.b.a.
** test cases for [[Template:Talk header/testcases4#Talk pages that use Cluebot|Talk pages having a Cluebot config]] – (twelve tests in place, passing).
More eyeballs and more tests are needed; this is needless to say a highly visible template and we need to test the new functionality, as well as regression to ensure nothing is broken before going live. I need to set this aside for a while, so any help appreciated. Add tests directly to the test page {{tl|Talk header/testcases4}}, and please examine or run regression tests on the first three testcase pages as well; please note what works/doesn't below. Doc on page testcases4 is still thin; feel free to adjust as needed, and if there is anything inscrutable, please lmk. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:10, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

:Just added the tests on tab 4 for talk pages with a Miszabot config, and they all seem to be passing with the version in the sandbox. Looking through tabs 1 and 3, everything appears fine (tab 2 is now completely redundant and could/should probably be deleted). The one thing I did notice that is not really as expected is that when the number of threads to keep on the page is 1, the grammar is wrong (see [[Talk:Conspiracy theory]]), and when it's 0, there shouldn't be a message at all but there is (see [[Talk:Cold fusion]]) – I should be able to fix both pretty easily. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 01:14, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
::That fix is now done. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 01:26, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
::: Edit-conflicted with you, so my test is invalid as I don't know if it took place after your fix, but the first part of the message was this: 
::: Oh, that's great; thanks for the testcases update, glad they worked. As far as minthreads and the two Talk pages, that could mean the legacy code was doing that, as the minthreads stuff is old code and was not changed for this upgrade (although the conditional logic around it was). Looking at legacy rev. [[Special:Permalink/1193759647‎|1193759647‎]], there is no adjustment for sing/plural; not sure if it handled the number of threads correctly or not at that point. But I am not seeing what you do: in both test methods, I see these results for Cold fusion:
:::* CF live: {{xt!|Discussions with timestamps are automatically archived by lowercase sigmabot III after 180 days of inactivity when more than 0 threads are present.}}
:::* CF sbox: {{xt|Discussions with timestamps are automatically archived by lowercase sigmabot III after 180 days of inactivity.}}
::: Post-ec again: that sandbox test of mine could've been run after your fix, so that is meaningless; but the live test showed that problem before; anyway, good that you've fixed that. I've maybe missed something from your message, as I feel I have two many balls in the air; did I? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 01:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
::::If that was the result you got, you definitely ran that test after it was fixed in the sandbox, it wouldn't have worked before [[Special:Diff/1216261661|this change]]. It was certainly the old version that was broken, I agree nothing that's been done related to this changed it. I don't think you've missed anything. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 01:58, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
{{od|::::}}
Was just poking around your new test cases, and found a new one at [[Talk:Hurricane Florence]] with minthreadstoarchive=7. It doesn't test the new code path, because the config defines the archive names as using the date style, and {{tl|Talk header}} doesn't display anything for that case. But, we still have access to all the config params and if we wanted, we *could* still display the bot notice in that case, maybe even in plain text not as a tooltip, as a way for Talk header to display *something* even if it can't show the links. For that matter, it wouldn't be that hard to reconstitute the actual archive names based on parsing the {{para|Archive}} param, but this is sounding more and more like a new proposal and off-topic with what we are testing here, so I think I'll drop this for now. I just wanted to get that out there, before I forgot about it, so we can take it up again if we want later after the dust has settled on current stuff. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:15, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Just to chime in regarding the cutoff for rounding ClueBot: it appears the code is using 24 hours. Only [[User:Novem Linguae]] suggested this. I have suggested 72 hours instead. Nobody has objected, but also, your response so far has been "it's incredibly easy to change it to any figure that comes out of consensus here" which is nice, but also kind of ignores my message. How about doing that which is so incredibly easy, and setting the number to 72 before finalizing testing, and then waiting for consensus to change it? [[User:CapnZapp|CapnZapp]] ([[User talk:CapnZapp|talk]]) 21:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

'''Note:''' the test code in the sandbox for adding this functionality has been removed in order to attend to a more important issue (see {{slink||Broken case}} below)<sup>&#91;[[Template talk:Talk header/Archive 11#Broken case|archived]]&#93;</sup>. The change will need to be re-added and retested in the sandbox. before moving ahead. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 06:15, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

== Strange behavior in check for unknown parameters ==

While updating [[Template:Setup auto archiving]] and [[Template:Setup cluebot archiving]] to not include the recently deprecated parameters in their prefill, I noticed that unknown parameters do not cause talk pages to be added to [[:Category:Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters]] even though that's what it seems like that category is for. The use of {{tl|Main other}} in that section causes only article-space pages to be categorized, but that doesn't make sense to me given that this template shouldn't ever be in article space in the first place. Perhaps [[User:Gonnym|Gonnym]], who introduced the tracking category, can clarify the intent – perhaps just a mistake. It looks like {{tl|Talkspace detect}} could be used to figure out which talkspace the template is used in, if that's what's desired. I am really not sure what to do here, though – there are probably a very large number of these unknown parameters given that they haven't been getting tracked. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 05:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

:Thanks. Now fixed. Was possibly a copy/paste error on my end. [[User:Gonnym|Gonnym]] ([[User talk:Gonnym|talk]]) 11:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

== Adding notice to use four tildes ==

On the [[Japanese Wikipedia]], the [[:ja:Template:Talkheader|talk header template]] has a message reminding people to sign their comments with four tildes and that a signature with the date and time will automatically populate.  We remind people on [[English Wikipedia|this Wikipedia]] to sign with four tildes, but it is not as prominent as in the Japanese Wikipedia.  I suggest we follow the Japanese Wikipedia's example and include a message to remind users to sign with four tildes, and word it as, "Sign with four tildes (<nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>).  A signature with the date and time will populate." [[User:Z. Patterson|Z. Patterson]] ([[User talk:Z. Patterson|talk]]) 20:07, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

:The Reply tool automatically signs comments, and given that it is what users are pushed toward this seems unnecessary, especially coupled with the fact that unsigned comments are signed by a bot if a new user manages to. This template [[Special:Diff/1095750592|did at one point]] include this guidance but it was removed, quite reasonably in my opinion. The more text is visible, [[Banner blindness|the less likely any of it will be read]]. [[User:Tollens|Tollens]] ([[User talk:Tollens|talk]]) 07:24, 26 January 2025 (UTC)