Help:Archiving a talk page

For a simplified version of this page, see Help:Archiving (plain and simple)

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcuts H:ARC WP:ARCHIVE WP:AATP

This page in a nutshell: This page explains how and why to set up archiving and archive search boxes on Wikipedia, offering multiple options and assessments of those options.

Editors archive old discussions on a talk page when the talk page becomes too large. Archiving is often done automatically by a bot. Step-by-step instructions can be found at Help:Archiving (plain and simple). Two main bots archive talk pages:

• User:ClueBot III uses settings from User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis.
• User:Lowercase sigmabot III uses settings from User:MiszaBot/config.

Archives can also be created manually. Manual archiving can be done by hand by cutting and pasting from a talk page to an archive subpage. One click archiving streamlines this process by adding an archive button to all talk page sections.

Only noticeboards and talk pages are archived because both can become very long. The talk page guidelines suggest archiving when the talk page exceeds 75 KB (or 75,000 bytes) or has multiple resolved or stale discussions. Older discussions that are still relevant can be summarized and linked using the {{FAQ}} template. Archiving one's own user talk page is preferred but optional; some users simply blank the page.