Help:Archiving a talk page/Other procedures

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

Move procedure

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

Archive standards

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

Permanent link archives method

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

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

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

{{revision link|1709131|Archive 1}}

which would display as Archive 1.

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

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

which displays as Archive 1.

Or, you can write more primitively as

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

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