Help:Archiving a talk page

Are you new here? Welcome! There is a simplified version of this page at Help: Archiving (plain and simple).

This help page is a how-to guide.

It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

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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.

It is customary to periodically 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 to set up automated archiving can be found at Help:Archiving (plain and simple). There are two main bots that archive talk pages:

User:ClueBot III will create archives based on the parameters set using User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis.
User:Lowercase sigmabot III will create archives based on the parameters set using 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.