Forum:Archiving article talk pages

Hopefully a quick one.

Can we archive article talk pages by year, or by something like per ten topics? It just gets to be a pain trying to scroll down even the table of contents for some pages every time. 05:22, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

Discussion
I say after every 50 topics or so would do. Some articles go for years without any new topics, so a year-by-year basis seems hard for some cases. 05:40, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

As JOP said, I'd say every ten topics/sections. 07:53, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

Do we have to set a specific "unit"? Can we just split up the page as we see fit? There are single section that goes on forever while other have just a couple of replies.

I suggest every 100 edits. (I really have to be careful in replying starting then)

Though no matter what "unit" you suggest, it will never be uniform...


 * Actually, I correct myself: we could use the page dimension as unit, we can check it in the page history. That way you can set a defined limit that will be the same for all pages. That or just use common sense.

I suggested 10 topics, because that's the amount at least I can see on the table of contents without scrolling when the page first loads- Like so. 15:04, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

10 is obviously too short. Should only be decided by length. SeaTerror (talk) 19:48, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

On article talk pages? I don't know. Look at Talk:Chapters and Volumes, for example. Page dimension is probably the most accurate, but then we'd probably end up cutting topics in half. 20:14, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

That's also true, but if we go with that obviously we should make it an exception. I still think that "common sense" is the best way... just give roughly an indication how "big" an archive should be and that's it.

Agreed on "common sense". 20:45, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

And common sense indicates that each archive should be how long? Because I feel like everyone is going to have different opinions. 20:53, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we really need to waste anyone's time with specific times when we can archive talks. And we run into issues like what the main criteria for archiving is (Time of post, number of posts, or length of posts, etc)

Personally, I think page length is the only real reason to archive a talk. So if something's too long, just go ahead and archive it. Just leave any active sections (or the most recent if none are active) and put everything else on the archive. I mean, if someone archives a talk page, is anyone going to fight it?

And personally, I'd say stuff like Talk:Donquixote Doflamingo is well over twice the length needed for an archive, and things like Talk:Pacifista are kind of right around the line of where I would archive. 20:53, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

^Agreed with the part about archiving when the page just feels too long. Makes sense now. 20:57, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

Also when we archive, do we just post the link to the archive and name it "Archive 1, 2" etc., or do we want to do some sort of actual tab? It'll look nice, but it also seems like too much work. 21:00, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

We do tabs. There's the Parent Tab Template that makes it real easy. Really, you can just look at any talk page with an archive, and copy/paste the code, just changing the link to the new page. 23:11, June 12, 2015 (UTC)

So archive occurs when it appears to be too long? 00:13, June 13, 2015 (UTC)