Template talk:Archives

Proposal to drop archiving params

Editors interested in this template may be interested in the discussion Template talk:Talk header#Proposal to drop archiving params. Template talk:Talk header has recently been updated to automatically derive archive bot params, and this is being imported here; the sandbox currently has a version of it, but it is not working yet. See Template:Archives/sandbox. Mathglot (talk) 10:56, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Support Once the code for Talk header is functional and bug-free, do feel free to implement the same functionality for this and any other alternative template. To clarify: the proposal I'm supporting is not merely to drop the support for those params. I am supporting the drop iff their role in the display of archiving params is replaced as mentioned. CapnZapp (talk) 12:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to further edits by Tollens, at first glance this appears to be working now, but there aren't any test cases for it yet, so it's not ready to be released until there are; I'll try and add some. Mathglot (talk) 07:49, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Initial remote test cases added here reveal one problem in the |banner=yes version, with the full caption squeezed into col 1; probably just needs a colspan=2 added at the right point. Mathglot (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

And to further edits by Aidan9382 as well to fix the banner issue. There has been little discussion in a month, so I verified test cases and released this to live. Remember that new param |nobot=yes will suppress the automatic bot notice; doc updates to follow. Mathglot (talk) 05:06, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I just added {{Archives}} to Talk:Gravity (2013 film) (only in the preview of course, I didn't save my edit), and it does not appear to handle |minthreadstoarchive= which is used there. I expected the text to say "This page has archives. Sections older than 120 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present if 2 or more threads are eligible for archiving." (my underlining). If you are still working on it, feel free to ignore this. I am just posting this because I got the impression from the previous comment development was considered finished. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:14, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

That is correct, it doesn't handle minthreadstoarchive, and never did, so that is the expected behavior. The {{Talk header}} template won't display it either, except in the sandbox version only developed yesterday, and remains pending further test case development and testing before it is released there. I think you might be confusing two things: the automation of the bot notice, which was released a while ago at {{Talk header}} and just released here, and the requested change to the bot notice wording which you proposed, which is a new feature now in testing at {{Talk header}}, but never developed here. Mathglot (talk) 18:13, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Of course I'd like this template to correctly display the same information as talk header. Once development of {{Talk header}} is complete, I hope the same or similar handling of |minthreadstoarchive= is implemented here as well. CapnZapp (talk) 17:10, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

This is a serious regression which makes me want to just ditch this template from pages I care about in preference for some more reader friendly template. Showing the name of the bot is usually distracting noise. Writing the archive age as "730 days" vs. "2 years" is much harder for readers to interpret. Is there any way to get the old behavior? –jacobolus (t) 21:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I would tend to agree somewhat for this template. The reason the change was made here was that a similar change was made at Template:Talk header, but the change there is just in a tooltip, unlike this one. I completely agree that the name of the bot should basically never be visible directly on the page, and somehow I don't think any of us considered conversion to months or years, though that wouldn't be difficult to implement. The importance of this change in my mind is that it prevents incorrect archive notices (and there are quite a number of those). I'm really not sure how to feel about this one.

One idea that might make everyone happy would be to display information only for parameters which have any value, rather than making it an all-or-nothing situation like nobot=. That way the information presented wouldn't be any more or less than what had already been set, and in the future a simple =yes or something along those lines would work for those parameters. Would that work in your case, assuming conversion to larger timescales was implemented as well, Jacobolus? Tollens (talk) 22:10, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

If the bot name (or other irrelevant config trivia) is in a tooltip that's fine with me. I just don't think we should be shoving these long and confusing bot names in every talk page reader's face. Anyone who cares about that can easily look at the page source.

Dates should ideally be rounded to the largest reasonably accurate unit, e.g. 30 or 31 days should be presented as "1 month" but 45 days should probably say either "6 weeks" or "1.5 months". Anything between 720–740 days should probably present as "2 years", but 550 days can plausibly be presented as either "1.5 years" or "18 months". I don't know if there's an existing facility in mediawiki/wikipedia for fuzzy time names. –jacobolus (t) 22:18, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the value in spending a lot of effort in order to fuzzy our parameter reporting. I'm completely fine with reporting 30d, 60d, 90d, and 120d as "30 days", "60 days", "90 days" and "120 days" respectively. Seeing "1 month" reported only to have to look at the actual parameters in order to understand if the period set is 30d or 31d (or 28d or 32d) is what seems like a downgrade to me. If anything, how about instead upgrading lowercase sigmabot to accept the full gamut of date units (so you can write 1m for one month, or 4w instead of 28d and so on and so on) - then we can simply report exactly what's written, trusting the editor to have made the choice between 4w and 30d and 1m, say. CapnZapp (talk) 17:24, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Relatively few people care about the bot config whatsoever (nor should they), and effectively nobody cares even a tiny bit about the precise number of days before bot archiving will happen, when archiving is set to more than a couple weeks. The config is done in terms of hours or days because that was convenient for machines, but it's an illegible and irrelevant unit for humans, who should not be distracted by an excessively pedantic summary making them try to calculate precisely how many months or years are in 740 hours or 1800 days or whatever. The point of these archiving bots is to (ideally conservatively) prevent talk pages from ballooning to unwieldy length and to prevent people from answering decades-old stale discussions with irrelevant new comments, not to enforce some kind of precise bureaucratic deadlines. –jacobolus (t) 17:32, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

"convenient for machines" - no, it was done because it was convenient to the human programmer creating these bots. The "machines" can understand weeks and months just fine. effectively nobody cares - with that mindset, you're not only trying to discredit other viewpoints; you're effectively disqualifying yourself from constructive discussion, since your stance amounts to "let's not show any real useful data at all". As a counterpoint: while the majority of people might not care how and when talk pages get auto-archived, not every piece of information needs to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. It's perfectly fine for a template like this to remain useful for those that need it, even though plenty others don't "care". What REALLY would be dumb, however, is to fuzzy the output enough so it's useless for those interested in it just to please those that will skip it anyway. CapnZapp (talk) 09:36, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

It's not "real useful data". It's configuration details intended for an automated bot which was never intended to be communicated to humans unless something malfunctions and they go hunting for it. If you personally care about these details they are very easy to find in the source, but forcing them into clear view in the talk page where they will distract every reader is reader-hostile; these details must be hidden behind a tooltip, collapsed section, or the like. If this template regression remains in place, I am going to start removing it from pages where I encounter it.

As for the dates: the over-precise dates are strictly inappropriate for human readers. The fuzzy dates are not "dumb": They are comprehensible at a glance, at the level of detail relevant to humans. (The extreme precision is not necessary for bots either; if bots were, say, 10% late to archive a page vs. whatever its configuration says, nobody would care.) As a compromise though, one thing you could do if you really care about the precise number of hours or days is you could put that information in the tooltip, and leave a fuzzy human legible date in plain view. –jacobolus (t) 15:42, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

And as for the shoving these long and confusing bot names in every talk page reader's face part: bot names aren't necessarily longer or more confusing that human editors' names. I believe helping new editors to understand how to set up autoarchiving themselves is a net positive, and for me, it really helped that I could click the bot name (leading to archiving how to info) directly. Let's not assume our audience is dumb. CapnZapp (talk) 09:36, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

This does not remotely "help new editors to understand how to set up autoarchiving". Come on. Perhaps more importantly: new editors do not need to set up auto-archiving. That's a task for someone who has been around for at least months if not years, and it's really not hard to figure out from the page source where to find relevant info. –jacobolus (t) 15:43, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Doc update

I always found this page hard to understand, so I've done some reorganization for clarity. A few paragraphs stuck in the middle of the parameters section made no sense to me there, so I moved them down to section § Notes, but it seems a mixed bag of stuff and I don't think it belongs there, either. Probably it needs to be sliced and diced with pieces shipped off to different parts of the doc. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 08:03, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Without having looked at your changes yet, probably best would be to mirror the documentation section from Talk header. So we document the same thing the same way, I mean. CapnZapp (talk) 14:16, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

In its current state, that would be difficult, but a useful task to attack. My changes to doc amounted to an overhaul of the whole page structure including heading names and where they were placed, and not very much on changing any of the parameter descriptions. I definitely wasn't concentrating on the bot-notice part of the doc here, but everything else not involving parameter descriptions, which was one big mess and hard to navigate. The re-org gives the doc a comprehensible ToC with logical subsections, and shorter and tighter intro sections or paragraphs, with more info added where needed in a couple of cases. Except for wikicode reformatting which did not affect the rendered page, I hardly touched the actual parameter descriptions at all. It's very long (28 parameters) and there's a lot of clunky descriptions which could be improved, but I have barely touched them, except to add a couple of explanatory notes in two cases. If you want to improve that section, with or without making them look similar to the Talk page template doc, be my guest; that would be a help. Mathglot (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

"This page has archives"

The phrase "This page has archives" that starts off the bot notice in the bottom section predates the recent round of changes. I didn't really take much notice of it before, but I don't know what purpose it serves. This is more noticeable now, in those cases where new param |nobot=yes is in use, because currently the bottom section ends up with that phrase and nothing else, which really seems pointless. But the whole phrase seems pointless to me, and I think we should just get rid of it. Mathglot (talk) 17:31, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree: remove it. I recommend just copying the language from {{talk header}} of something like "Auto-archiving period XX unit", with other config metadata in a tool-tip on auto-archiving period. –jacobolus (t) 00:05, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

If it seems pointless to keep the phrase when |nobot= is used, then by all means remove the phrase too (along with the suppressed bot parameters). If the bot parameters are there, I don't see the harm in having a friendly introductory phrase; perhaps tweak it from "This page has archives" to "This page is archived automatically" in order to say something relevant to the following information. CapnZapp (talk) 17:07, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

If you want the phrasing to be "This page is automatically archived after XX unit", with the tooltip on "This page is automatically archived", that also would be fine. If there's no bot config, it could maybe say "This page is manually archived". –jacobolus (t) 17:41, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Just as an aside, |nobot=yes may have a name that suggests "no bot" but as documented, really means "suppress the bot param display". That is, "there ARE bot params active, just don't show them". I don't think there's a parameter to say "this page is manually archived". The only way to determine that is to not find any bot setup on the page. (If the page isn't archived automatically, then the only explanation for any archives is that they were/are created manually) Do tell me if I'm wrong, though. CapnZapp (talk) 09:12, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we could change it to |nobotnotice= if it isn't clear. There are currently 9 Talk pages that use it under the name 'nobot' so those would have to be updated if we make a param name change. Mathglot (talk) 19:54, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

More examples needed

A template with 28 parameters needs a lot of examples; currently there are two. On the other hand, we don't want to have dozens of examples in that section, making the page needlessly long. I would propose something like four or five examples showing some of the most popular param combos, and then a subpage Template:Archives/doc/Examples (or maybe Template:Archives/Examples) linked from the #Examples section, for more detailed examples of all of the parameters, or at least the params needing one. Mathglot (talk) 17:58, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Change color

Can someone teach me how to change the template's background color to my preference? Thanks in advance. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 17:40, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@98Tigerius: You can do it using this CSS rule:

#archivebox {
  background-color: #EE82EE;
}

in your CSS. This will alter the background to  . --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:03, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

 Thank you very much! 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 19:15, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Edge case

@Mathglot The change to auto-generate broke my user talk page, where I use two archiving configs to archive certain messages instantly to a separate notifications subpage. The two configs have two different ages to prevent normal messages from being automatically archived to the notifications subpage. Currently, I set one of the boxes to not auto-generate, but I can't get the correct age to show. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:49, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

 Checking... Mathglot (talk) 17:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Aaron Liu, thanks for adding this bug report. When the auto-generate upgrade was designed, it did not foresee the case where a page (like your Talk page) would have two separate archive configs on the page, and so when it looks for the config, it just picks the first one it finds and assumes that's the right one. For most pages, that works, but obviously for your page, which has two configs, it does not. The fix will involve a new optional parameter (name t.b.d. but maybe |config_number=; suggestions welcome). So after the fix, in your second archive config, it will look like this:

{{archives|title=Notifications|config_number=2|...}}

Brief analysis: Template:Archives calls Template:Talk header/archivebotparse to do the parsing, and in a couple of places, archivebotparse calls {{Template parameter value}} to grab the config. The third positional parameter (TEMPLATE-COUNT) currently is hard-coded to 1, which causes the problem in your Notifications archive box.

Repair design: archivebotparse should pass the value of the new config_number parameter to {{tmpv}} in position 3, passing 1 as the default value if there is no such parameter.

Testing: The design and implementation of the fix is quite simple at the sandbox level, but because the change affects both the {{Archives}} and {{Talk header}}, both highly visible templates, careful testing is needed before release – it needs to have a new test case added (ideally, a few contrasting ones) and both templates will have to be checked. I don't anticipate any problems with that, it's just that it may take some time. Are you okay with this for the time being?

A good way to proceed imho, as well as to get you up and running sooner rather than later, is to go ahead and make the sandbox changes (one to archivebotparse/sandbox, and one to Archives/sandbox to invoke it), which could be done fairly quickly and then use your page as a tester. This would involve changing your {{Archives}} invocations on your page to {{Archives/sandbox}} instead, and adding the new param. If it works, great, and you'll be the first/only one to benefit from it for a while, while testing is ongoing. When it's fully tested and the new version is finally released, you just self-revert (i.e., go back to the regular, non-sandbox version on your Talk page) and it will continue working as desired. How does this plan sound to you? Adding Aidan9382. Mathglot (talk) 18:44, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Adding a template count to grab a specific instance would be fine. Also, you don't need to pass 1 as a default value if config_number isnt specified, since tmpv will default to 1 itself. The only remaining edge case that wouldn't (couldn't) solve would be if they used 2 different archiving bots actively, but that's very rarely done, and generally for good reason, since it can get messy. You could potentially just allow the user to specify a certain bot if that's a case you also want to worry about. Aidan9382 _(talk) 19:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

So TL;DR what I would need to do is change my archives templates to their sandbox versions after you lovely people finish construction? That sounds good to me.

In my opinion there should be a way to actually disable the auto-generation. Currently I can't specify the archival age after disabling. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Right, but we're not quite there, yet. There is a way to disable it: add |nobot=yes to the invocation. Just tested this in Preview mode (without saving) on your UTP, and it works. (It leaves a rump statement, 'This page has archives' which should probably be removed, but the bot notice about archiving is suppressed.) This is documented at Template:Archives#Archive bot config, with an illustration in the #Usage section, but TemplateData needs to be updated for those using VE. Mathglot (talk) 19:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

What I want is for the statement in the first box to say This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by ClueBot III. I have added the |age=30 parameter but it does not work. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:04, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

You don't need to (and shouldn't) add that parameter; it is deprecated. The autogeneration derives it automatically from the config, preventing it from getting out of sync. Previously, it didn't work for multiple configs as in your case, but now that the sandbox version has been created and is in testing, it is usable on an alpha-test basis. See how your Talk page looks now, calling the sandbox instead of the live template, and if the page now looks the way you want it. Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Having nobot actually turn off the features would still be useful in 1. edge cases we haven't seen yet 2. my talk page, where the "Index link" currently links to the indices for the normal archives, yet is linked to in the notifications box.
Anyways, thanks for the help! This is still tremendously better. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad it's better, though I admit to not understanding the rest of that comment. I also don't understand the edit summary here about not wanting the "95 days", and something about instant archival; how can the archival be instant if you've specified 95 days in the config? Feel free not to explain if you're happy with how it is now, just wanted to say I'm pretty much in the dark, here, and if there might still be bugs that would affect performance for others with two configs, it would be better to know about it sooner rather than later. (I do understand my earlier mix-up in the links in the two configs which you subsequently fixed; no explanation needed there.) Mathglot (talk) 02:01, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The notifications config (theoretically) instantly archives anything that contains certain pieces of text. It has a longer duration than the other 30 days duration, so that Cluebot doesn't archive any normal messages to the notifications subpages.

The notifications config also has nogenerateindex. As a result, Cluebot's generated indices are for the normal config only. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Don't worry about this anymore, I've discovered the |index=none parameter. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:19, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Note for Aidan: the long name of the parameter |config_number= causes some undesirable line wrapping in the view window that I'd like to eliminate or minimize as much as possible; am thinking of shortening it to cnbr, cno, cf, or just n. It will be used so rarely I don't think a highly mnemonic param name is needed for this param, and the shorter the better, to keep the preview code more legible for editors. How about just |n=? Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I think just |n= might be a bit ambiguous when overlooking usages of the template ("n of what?"). |config_n= could be a good middle ground between the two. Aidan9382 _(talk) 13:38, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

How about just |cfg=? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:06, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

That works for me; stand by... Mathglot (talk) 19:43, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, that change is in, now. This is a breaking change with respect to your Talk page, so if you wish to pick up the changes, please change your UTP sandbox call to use |cfg= instead of 'config_number'; thanks. Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Next step: create some test cases. (Aaron, your UTP is a kind of live test case, and an initial hint that the code might be working, at least in that one case, but not anything like a complete demonstration of it at the level of confidence that we would need for a highly visible template.) I may not get to the test cases immediately, but anyone is welcome to create them. One idea would be to add a dozen or so configs to the /testcases page, and have the test cases link to them via the new |cfg= param. We would also have to have some regression tests to make sure that the far more usual case of only a single config per page still works properly. Mathglot (talk) 21:34, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Unrelated sandbox changes

Aaron: I have undone your changes to Archive template bot notice wording and the way param |nobot= works in Template:Archives/sandbox. Once the current changes for the multiple-config upgrade have been tested and released to live, then you can pick up the sandbox and make other changes to wording or to functionality of the params. Or, feel free to make your changes to Template:Archives/sandbox2, and develop them there. Thanks. Mathglot (talk) 20:07, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, I didn't make any changes to the wording. The diff displays weirdly when inline, but all I did was take the nobot if condition out and wrap the entire td body instead, plus unindenting the originally wrapped part. I don't think it'll cause any problems. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:12, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right, and if you want to take over this development and release the multi-config upgrade along with your changes at the same time, I am fine with that and I'll stop and hand it off to you, and you can revert my change and continue as you wish. But I won't continue or move anything to live under my sig with both sets of changes in there at the same time. Please lmk how you would like to proceed. Mathglot (talk) 20:31, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Either is fine to me, though I'd prefer you deploy the multi-config upgrade first, as I am unfamiliar with such things and can always do an edit request later. Thanks again for your timeliness. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:04, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I'll carry on with the initial plan; thanks. Mathglot (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2024 (UTC)