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More explicit standards

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

I have been chewing through the list of longest talk pages[1]. My rules for myself:

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

The settings I almost always copy and paste are: 

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

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

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

My recommendations and reasons would go something link this, although I'm pretty flexible:
Archive header : whatever is there is probably fine. There are perhaps a dozen names for this template, some are more explicit and some are more brief.
Algo : an archiving time of more than one year or less than three months is usually not necessary. The exception is if the talk page is currently or habitually very fast-moving. Highly controversial news stories may start out with a fast archiving time that is later relaxed.
Max archive size : 50k is on the low end and also appropriate for most pages, in which discussions are usually short. Too many topics on the same archive page can be hard to navigate. A size larger than 200k may be too much text, unless this is an archive containing multiple related topics created in a short time.
Min threads left : The default of 5 remaining threads is expected, although fewer may be desirable if the discussions tend to be long. Keeping some discussions on the talk page helps first-timers see what happens on a talk page. Talk pages should generally not be "blanked" if there is a normal amount of discussion on them (5-10 topics), even if the topics are unlikely to garner replies. But if one huge and old topic occupies a talk page for a long time, it may be appropriate to archive it manually.
Min threads to archive : The default of 1 is expected unless the talk page is moving very fast.
Counter : is managed by the bot and should only be incremented to cut off an archive page in special circumstances. Perhaps, before and after the article is renovated, if doing so would not create a tiny archive.
Archive name : should match the article name, and is usually corrected by a bot if there is any mistake. Wizmut (talk) 17:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, thanks for doing this. I'd personally go for 100K though and I think that's closer to the average these days, but your mileage may vary. When I'm setting up archiving, I usually copy and paste the template from Talk:King Arthur, where I set up automated archiving in July 2018, back when I was doing this sort of thing more often (see the relevant entry for that month in my personal Wikipedia timeline). The King Arthur talk page is relatively busy so I set the algo parameter there to 90 days, but for less active talk pages I usually set it to a year. Graham87 (talk) 03:45, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Wizmut: Thanks for taking a look into the bot stuff. Some thoughts:
  • Regarding, "There are perhaps a dozen names for this template, some are more explicit and some are more brief." Agree that there's no preference for one over the other. If you go back a decade or so, many of the names were actually different templates with slightly different text and features, which not having been around back then seems very chaotic. The archive header templates that are different are for date-based archives.
  • Regarding "I have looked for, but cannot find, any detailed guidelines saying what a normal talk page should look like and why." The only stuff I found was at WP:TALKSIZE, WP:OWNTALK, and WP:BLANKING.
  • I checked to see if the editor who started adding code samples was still around. John of Reading is still active, but that was in 2012 so I don't know if this is still on their mind. Valereee started Help:Archiving (plain and simple), and Qwerfjkl started {{Setup cluebot archiving}}. And so they would might have some relevant brains to pick regarding archiving defaults.
Good luck! Rjjiii (talk) 04:36, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I just copied {{subst:Setup auto archiving}}. My only comment would be that I feel smaller archives are generally better; massive ones are a huge pain on older/mobile devices, and there's no real reason not to keep them small apart from navigation (which is what the search bar is for after all). — Qwerfjkltalk 12:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For maxarchivesize, I recommend 500K. When you want to browse or search an archive, you want it all in one place, not thinly sliced.
“Each individual archive should not be larger than 512kB, because this may cause accessibility problems for some devices”. I think this is very old. What device has accessibility problems at 512K. How often will someone on such a device be browsing archives?
My personal testing is that no problems arise with 1MB. Occasionally I have seen much larger pages (being deleted at MfD for being too large, and NOTWEBHOST), and they are no problem to access from a PC, but were a problem on my smartphone. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
500K is pushing it with my screen reader setup, but I do have ways of getting around that sort of problem (and it depends how many links and headings there are on the page ... and on most talk pages that aren't that active, a limit of 100K will only )produce a few archives at the most). Around 100K just feels like a more typical case to me. I sometimes raise it to 200 or 300K for particularly busy talk pages. Graham87 (talk) 13:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping, RJJ. Wizmut, I personally think this page is mostly for people who are interested in the technical side of setting up archives so they can set them up on pages that need some sort of unusual archiving. I've suggested before that this page be moved to Help:Archiving (technical) and that Help:Archiving (plain and simple) be moved here. Last time this was discussed others agreed, but there was concern expressed over making the move correctly, and I wasn't sure I understood any complexity, so it ended up archiving unactioned. @Graham87, was there something in particular you were concerned about that makes that move complex? Valereee (talk) 11:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re: standards. Your rules for yourself seem reasonable to me. I personally like to see five threads, even if they're very old, because that gives me a quick idea of what's been discussed most recently. For instance, if I go to an article and something seems strangely missing, I'll check the talk to make sure it isn't being discussed or been discussed recently. If there's literally been no discussion of that strangely missing info in the five discussions on the page, which go back six years, I won't bother to check the archives. If the page is blank, I can't easily see that info and have to check the archives. Valereee (talk) 12:09, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee: Re the possibility of a page move: yes the archives and everything else would have to be moved correctly ... but I just thought of another possible snag: links that point here that might really be looking for the technical info. Maybe a proper requested moves process might iron that sort of thing out? Graham87 (talk) 12:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right now we have:
Going through the redirects, five point to sections of this page and should continue to do so. The others should probably point to whatever is the default archiving page. And yes, there are definitely places like Template:Templates for archiving that are linking to both a technical overview and simple instructions. Rjjiii (talk) 03:00, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

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

I'm working on it. I'm not a fan of this type of archiving either ... Graham87 (talk) 05:27, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All done. Graham87 (talk) 06:16, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks -- 65.93.183.249 (talk) 07:46, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

Introducing archiving to new editors

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We are the only mainstream discussion platform where old posts have to be manually archived, and our archiving system will be inevitably confusing to new editors. The essay User:Trialpears/Archiving manifesto offers a kind of long-term roadmap to making the process less confusing, but I think even then it will present somewhat of a conceptual hurdle.

Last year, Mathglot initiated a conversation on Template talk:Archives about archiving documentation and raised the question, "How do we best document the various archiving templates, and the Help or info pages that deal with archiving, in order that it all be clear to users and not leave them confused?" I think that is still a relevant concern. I have gotten somewhat into the weeds on a lot of specific archiving issues (making {{archive}} auto-detect sequential and annual archives, cleaning up old archive templates, updating WP:OCA, proposing fixes at User talk:Elli/OneClickArchiver, cleaning up template documentation, revising the lead to this page, and linking this page from many pages of archive documentation). Going back to that broader discussion on the documentation though, Mathglot proposed "a pyramid with a brief intro at the top with links, and ensure that all of the pages contribute as part of an integrated whole, rather than as a set of unrelated one-man bands", and Valereee commented further down the page, "I've felt for a long time that Help:Archiving a talk page is much too long and involved for the average editor just trying to set up typical talk page archives. Help:Archiving (plain and simple) is plenty of information for such editors and probably needs to be where 99% of editors land when trying to find instructions. (Full disclosure: I created that one initially for my own use.)" I largely agree that the copy & paste page is what most editors will need, and that this page is rather technical. This page (since that discussion) now frontloads the copy & paste material, and, I think, for most readers the lead of this page will offer a general map of what is going on and what archiving is.

One thing, I think, is still missing, and a kind of introduction targeted more at a brand new user, which would be a part of that 'brief intro at the top'. I experimented with what it might look like added onto Help:Archiving (plain and simple) at User:Rjjiii/sandbox2(Permanent link) but worried that any additions to that page could make it less useful, and honestly since a copy button has been added to the page, it could be shortened further to pare down the copying instructions.

And finally that kind of top-down pyramid kind of documentation remains undrafted. If someone does create more of an introduction to the process, the top of the pyramid, I think it would also be wise to think about where the existing links should point, with many of them currently pointing here, needing to point there, even if that slightly changes the meaning of WP:ARCHIVE, H:ARC, or Help:Archive. Help:Archiving, Help:Archive, and Help:Archives all now redirect here, to this page. Wikipedia:Archiving remains a disambiguation page.

I'd be interested to hear from others on where we should be heading, and what the next steps are. @Novem Linguae, Ivanvector, Sdkb, and CapnZapp: ← courtesy pings for editors involved in the previous discussion. Rjjiii (talk) 04:04, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I personally think the minute we start adding to the plain and simple page, we make it more difficult for newer users and even simply less tech-savvy users. I don't think anyone needs to understand how to assess which bot is best at plain and simple; that's handled at length on Help:Archiving a talk page,, and anyone who wants that level of info knows where to find it. I don't think anyone needs an explanation of refactoring a talk page or even a link at plain and simple. I don't think people even really need an explanation of why we need to archive; no one is getting themselves to that page because they don't understand that. Let's KISS. The link at the bottom to the original Help:Archiving a talk page is plenty to point anyone who wants more info in the right direction. Valereee (talk) 08:59, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure the automatic archiving process can and will be be improved, but I don't think "new users find the process of setting up and maintaining automatic archiving difficult or confusing" is a problem that needs solving. Do users need to know the ins and outs of archiving already while they're still new? No. Do new users even need to setup archiving at all? Probably not, but if they do, we offer {{Setup auto archiving}}. Everything else can be handled by not-new users. Let's keep assuming any reader of the more involved help pages on archiving is not-new. Regards CapnZapp (talk) 09:17, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, the entire reason I set up the plain and simple version was to give myself an easy place to go, and I figured others were in the same boat so moved it to WP space. And I wasn't by any means a new user, just not techy, which I think sometimes techy users don't understand: the banner saying "Are you new here?" wouldn't have applied to me. What it ought to say is "Find this page overwhelming? If you're a typical editor who just wants to set up a simple archives, you probably don't actually need to read this, just go to plain and simple instead." :D
All I wanted a solution for when I came into a not-that-heavily-used talk page, noticed that in the many years since it was created, there'd been 18 sections, some of which were 25 years old, and set up an archives to retain the history but make the page easier to read. That's all I wanted, and when I came to the help page for setting up an archive, what I got was every possible thing any techy editor would need or want to know when dealing with more complicated situations. Valereee (talk) 10:20, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think Help:Archiving a talk page#Example with sequentially numbered archives is the most useful section of this help page. I often type WP:ARCHIVE, scroll down to there, and copy paste the code onto talk pages to set up archiving. Perhaps we could move it to the top to display it more prominently. No other ideas come to mind at the moment. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:09, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, first section would be what 99.999% of people were looking for (and probably what 99.999% of article talk pages need), and then the rest of the page is for tech discussion and special cases and why archive? That would work for me. We could even merge plain and simple here with a shortcut. Valereee (talk) 13:10, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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