DIYWiki:Archiving pages

How to Archive pages

Why to archive pages

Talk pages such as Talk:Main Page get big and the notes and discussions on them get out of date. Archiving saves the content (for reference or in case of disputes) in a rather more formal way than the page's history does.

How to

This should be done by sysops only

There doesn't seem to be any tool built-into mediawiki (or at least, not into this instance of it) to archive pages so this has to be done by hand. Here is one way to do this. It is easiest to open the pages being worked on in separate browser windows or tabs: these are referred to below as [1] [2] etc.

• [1] Open page to archive in this window/tab

• [2] Edit the page in this window/tab.

• [1] In the browser's location field add the string '/Archive_YYYYMMDD' (e.g. '/Archive_20081225' for 25th December 2008).

Note however that the archives of Talk:Main_Page/Discussion (the only page archived so far) are at Talk:Main_Page/Archive_yyyymmdd NOT Talk:Main_Page/Discussion/Archive_yyyymmdd so for this page ONLY modify the location (URL) accordingly!

• • Press Enter or click Go or whatever to load this location/URL. This should give:

There is currently no text in this page, you can search for this page title in other pages or edit this page.

• • Follow the edit this page which will open up an edit box for the new (archive) page.
  • Copy & paste the contents of the edit box of [2] to here.
  • Add a summary like

archive created from Talk:Main_Page/Discussion 20080229

and save the page (after previewing to check it's OK)

• • Protect the page, giving a reason such as archive page.

• [2] Edit the page that's been archived - typically replacing most of the text with a line like

 ''Previous discussions on this page have been [[DIYWiki:Archiving pages|Archived]]''
  * [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 20080229|29th February 2008]]

• Check that the link to the archive page works OK.

Alternative method

1. Move the page to be archived to the archived version (e.g. [[Talk:Rubbish]] to [[Talk:Rubbish/Archive_20071225]]). Protect this page.
2. Edit the original page (which is now a redirect, so follow the link from the archive page back to get to it) and delete the redirect e.g.:

#REDIRECT [[Talk:Rubbish/Archive_20071225]]

and add a link to the archived page, and any other text as required (such as links to previous archived versions).