Template talk:Talk header

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| minthreadstoarchive

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This parameter is still not discussed by the popup message explaining why/why not a page gets archived.

If | minthreadstoarchive = 2 for instance, then an editor needs to read the actual code (=editing the page) to understand why the archive bot isn't running. (It is because even though a section is clearly ripe for archiving, there is only one section to archive, and the parameter tells the bot to hold off archiving until it can archive 2 or more sections in a single go).

Either we agree the bot's behavior should be explained by what we tell talk page readers, or we agree this isn't necessary.

In the first case, the info that the bot won't act until more talk sections have expired needs to be added somehow. In the second, why not simply remove all info related to the bot's parameters? CapnZapp (talk) 14:27, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CapnZapp, we could try adding it to the tooltip somehow. But I'm also not losing sleep at night over it just not being displayed, and I'd oppose any sort of display more prominent than inclusion in the tooltip. Sdkb talk 14:54, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@CapnZapp and Sdkb: I think it is a good idea if done within the tooltip. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:29, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Weird redlinked tracking category

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Within the past few days, this template has started throwing up a redlinked Category:Pages using Talk header that I can't figure out how to fix.

This template is used on well over 750,000 pages, so it's clearly not a category we would actually need for tracking purposes — we have various more specialized categories, like Category:Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters, to track errors in its usage, but we would have no need whatsoever for a comprehensive category indiscriminately tracking all of its usages across the board. That's not what's actually happening, however: it isn't showing up across the board on all 750,000 usages of the template, it's showing up on isolated project pages that are invoking the template for discussion or testing purposes, such as Template:Talk header/testcases4 and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 May 17.

But it also isn't being directly transcluded by the template itself — the template only adds the more specialized error-tracking categories, while including absolutely no code that would directly transclude an indiscriminate Category:Pages using Talk header, and it hasn't been edited since December 2024 to start adding any new categories that didn't already exist previously. So once again, it's clearly being smuggled in via a module.

When the report last updated on Thursday, it was only on the testcases page, which I resolved by wrapping the invocation that was causing it in {{suppress categories}} — but when I did my daily "have any of the last set of redlinks come back again" check today, it was back, this time on the TFD page. And while I could just wrap that one in the suppress wrapper too, the fact that it recurred more than once suggests that it might continue to recur if it isn't resolved at the source.

So could somebody figure out where it's coming from and make it go away? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:16, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can answer the where part of that - currently the category is being emitted only by the sandbox version of this template (see Special:Diff/1291362857). As to what the purpose of it is, not too sure. Aidan9382 (talk) 14:27, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Archives needs the archiving part of Talk header

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{{Archives}}. See:

We need someone with template skills to copy the archive banner part of {{talk header}} over to {{archives}}. And {{talk header}} uses Lua. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:41, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The archive-banner part doesn't. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:11, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Deduplication

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After Timeshifter suggested making {{archives}}'s banner style more similar to the archives box in this template, I've been exploring the idea of replacing the archives box in the talk header here with {{archives}}'s banner style with some parameters. What do you think?

{{Archives/sandbox|root=Talk:France|banner=yes|tooltip=yes|image=none}} →

Note some differences:

  1. The horizontal rule (bar) above the search box would be removed. Though I never got why that was there anyway; the search box is very closely related to the list of archives.
  2. When the archives have been set up yet the first archive page has not been created, the full template will still show:

{{Archives/sandbox|root=User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox|banner=yes|tooltip=yes|image=none}} →

Though I don't see any reason to at this time, I could make changes to eliminate these differences if there's consensus to. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:53, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If there are no archives yet the whole section should be hidden. –jacobolus (t) 01:58, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but the page links show, no matter what (if there're any). - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 02:05, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, when there's no archives yet, you want to show this?
{{Archives/sandbox|root=User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox|banner=yes|tooltip=yes|image=none|search=no}} →
Or do you mean hide the archive part entirely, only showing the policy reminders and stuff above the archives section of Talk Header?
@Timeshifter recommended instead only displaying the archival configuration:
Aaron Liu (talk) 02:18, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like a variation of this:

{{Archives/sandbox|root=User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox|banner=yes|tooltip=yes|image=none|search=no}} →

Except I would substitute: "ClueBot III will archive sections when more than 4 are present" for the first part. I don't know how to make the banner, so I just put it in a table. Needs the tooltip too.

ClueBot III will archive sections when more than 4 are present. Auto-archiving period: 3 months

--Timeshifter (talk) 03:48, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how that's superior to "just the configuration" (box with just "Sections older than..." and nothing else). Aaron Liu (talk) 11:36, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That one takes up 2 lines on my 1080p monitor even at the same banner width as {{talk header}}. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:24, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've shortened the automatic summary so the ClueBot case for just the summary sentence is also just one line. Check out my sandbox: User:Aaron Liu/sandbox. Your suggestion also takes up two lines for sigmabot. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:30, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If there are no archives yet, nothing needs to show at all. In practice people only add a bot to archive talk pages when they are getting long-ish and the bot is supposed to run at the earliest opportunity. We don't need any special marker for the short and trivial time window in between when the bot setup is added and the first time it runs. Thinking about this is a waste of time and effort; find something better to do. –jacobolus (t) 14:19, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Thinking about this is a waste of time and effort; find something better to do." Well then, stop thinking about it, and go elsewhere with your comments.
I, and many others, have added archiving bots to pages with few sections currently. On contentious articles for example. For example, to make sure the minimum thread settings aren't set to zero or one, as a means to stifle discussion. Also, 4 is the minimum for a table of contents to show up in Vector 2010.
It can be months to go from 4 threads to 5 threads. So letting people know there is an archiving bot already set up keeps people from wasting time looking in the wikitext. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:01, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to: this part of the template works fine as it currently is, and there are plenty of better things to do. Unfortunately, by proposing changes to one of the most widely used templates on the site, you are forcing other folks to think about it.
"I, and many others, have added archiving bots to pages with few sections currently."
Well one easy solution is to just stop doing that. Alternately, you can keep doing it, and not worry that readers who care about the archive settings need to read the page source. If there are only 4 threads on the talk page, then any choice to think about archive settings is some editor's own business – if they want to spend their time looking at the page source they can do so, or they could just not worry about it and move on with their day. There's no significant need to archive talk pages until they become unmanageably long (say, at least 10+ topics) or full of extremely stale discussion. If there are no archives, then showing anything at all related to archives is distracting and confusing to unfamiliar readers, while providing negligible benefit to anyone else. I am opposed to showing it. –jacobolus (t) 20:29, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll leave the discussion about what to display when there are no archives yet to others, although I think the general principle that we should only display information when it is relevant is a good one. I support removing the horizontal rule per Aaron Liu's reasoning and general graphical design best practice, and I likewise support overall consolidation of templates, so I hope this goes forward. Cheers, Sdkb talk 20:57, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It could be an optional parameter to show something when there are no archives yet. That lets the page editors decide. I like Aaron Liu's latest version:

I think Sigmabot or Cluebot can be used as the link label. The full name can be used as the link under the label. That will keep it all shorter, and on one line in most cases. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:52, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still prefer the last version mentioned #c-Aaron_Liu-20250620021800-FlightTime_Phone-20250620020500. It's simple and doesn't extend code to handle template parameters to a somewhat unwieldy level. After a change it's also no more longer than what Timeshifter prefers. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:57, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I realized elsewhere there is no need to right and left align the 2 halves of the banner showing just above when there are no archives. They can be joined. That might make the coding easier. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:18, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The splitting is not the problem. The problem is having two versions of the summary of the archive configuration. Which I don't think even has a benefit as what you like more fits on the exact same number of lines after I shortened the automatic summary. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:04, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OK. This is pretty short below. In a table since I don't know how to do a banner. Removed "automatically". Kept full bot names.

Lowercase sigmabot III will archive sections older than 30 days when more than 4 are present.
Cluebot III will archive sections older than 30 days when more than 4 are present.

--Timeshifter (talk) 02:25, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that sounds good. (I still think "may" is better to prevent people asking when a message will be archived since ClueBot has inconsistent scheduling. It's also slightly shorter.) Aaron Liu (talk) 02:42, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How long can Cluebot take to archive a page once the necessary number of sections has been reached? Maybe a tooltip can be put on the word "will" saying "depending on bot scheduling". Another problem is if there is a minimum number of threads to archive at a time. That could go in a tooltip on the words "older than 30 days". Maybe "minimum of 2 sections older". That option should be removed from the bots in my opinion. It can be very confusing to editors. It is "minthreadstoarchive" in Sigmabot. "minarchthreads" in Cluebot. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:02, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ClueBot does things a bit irregularly. I think it's best to just say "may" plus, for example, the bot could be temporarily down. I also don't think much people need to have minarchthreads displayed in no small part because nobody has ever asked for it to be displayed. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:22, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no need to surface this information to readers (and if you are confused about it, you can put your worry away and ignore the distinction). The point of having a minimum number of threads to archive is to prioritize human discussion over distracting and not-at-all-urgent bot edits. This configuration option helps the bot better serve the needs of a variety of different types of talk pages with different levels of activity. If a bot takes an extra day, week, month, or 3 years to archive a particular discussion, it causes no harm. Whether a discussion page shows 4, 6, or 10 prior topics and whether some of them are 6 months, a year, or 3 years old is not really relevant to participating on that page. These features only become relevant if the page is becoming bogged down or people keep getting distracted replying to no-longer-relevant discussions.
The parts readers care about, with respect to archiving, are: (1) the discussion page should not get overwhelmingly big so that it's necessary to skim past many hundreds of kilobytes of talk history to get to active conversations; (2) the discussion page should not gratuitously keep around very old discussions about past versions of the page that are no longer relevant after significant intermediate editing – it's rarely if ever useful to have someone reply to 10+ year old topics, most of whose participants are long gone; and (3) the archives of old discussions should be easy to locate, and ideally searchable. Everything having to do with bots and their configuration is a distant last place, only of interest to a tiny group of readers. –jacobolus (t) 03:34, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is also no good reason to publish the bot's name to ordinary readers, for whom it is irrelevant. Having the bot name in the "Auto-archiving period" mouse-over text when there are archives available is already more than sufficient.
Adding additional "optional parameter" seems like a bad idea. It's self-indulgent to throw additional distractions into regular readers' faces that is only relevant to a trivially tiny subset of editors who care about bot config settings but can't be bothered to read the page source.
–jacobolus (t) 03:12, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The entire thing is for people who care about archiving, not regular readers. I don't see any optional parameters added here. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:20, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Quite the contrary. This is an extremely widely used template. Every bit of it needs to be extremely important to justify showing up in the faces of readers. Editors working on this template must hold regular readers' interests firmly above their own or other "power users'" interests. The template API must also be kept as simple as possible, since it is very widely deployed and we shouldn't be forcing large numbers of editors to go consult the documentation unless it's necessary.
The fundamental purpose of this section of the template is to show an archive search box; when there are no archives that purpose is nullified and the section should be hidden. Additional doodads about bot configuration are essentially distractions from the primary purpose, and to the extent they are shown at all they must be made as unobtrusive as possible. It's okay to use otherwise unusable space next to the archive wikilink list to show a very brief summary with more information in a mouseover, because in that context readers will already see that there are archives and it's not too confusing what "Auto-archiving period: 1 year" (or whatever) means. But when there are no archives, and the metadata doodads are the only thing left, they aren't important enough to justify themselves. –jacobolus (t) 03:21, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You have a low opinion of readers' ability to understand something as simple as this: "Cluebot III will archive sections older than 30 days when more than 4 are present." --Timeshifter (talk) 03:30, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, I just have high standards and care a lot about respecting the needs of ordinary readers instead of self indulgently making every part of the site as unwelcoming as possible. –jacobolus (t) 03:31, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying the entire thing we're discussing about showing just the config information when there's no archives yet is mainly for people who care about archiving. I found it weird that you singled the bot's name out.
It's also good to have some indication the template will show the archives listing. The archives box on pages without a talk page header is one of the ways to help verify that your bot config will work correctly, as the config summary won't show up if e.g. you set an invalid archival duration. And you don't know whether logged-out editors—our most prolific content contributors by word count—will be surprised when their discussions suddenly disappear after a day.
Also, the parameter to disable the search box exists for a reason. More than enough people find this area useful for purposes besides searching the archives. If you were correct that only the search box was what's important, you would not have anything besides the search box so as to simplify and "not confuse regular readers".
I don't see any reason this'll newly cause editors to consult the documentation. Again, this will not add any new parameters. The config summary is already in the tooltip and if anyone would be confused they already are. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:31, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Literally nobody's discussion is going to "disappear after a day" on a talk page that just now had archiving set up but hasn't yet had the bot run on it yet, unless the bot is outrageously misconfigured. cf. YAGNI. "not add any new parameters" – I was replying to "It could be an optional parameter to show something when there are no archives yet. That lets the page editors decide." –jacobolus (t) 03:37, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, disappear after a week. The first time someone goes to a talk page they reads all applicable banners. A week later they wants to check on it, so during break time they mentally ignores the banners "they's read already" to discover that their discussion has mysteriously disappeared. This is curbed if not prevented by having an indication that automatic archiving is set up, and we use the rest of that "otherwise unusable" one-liner space to say a little bit of details. The population of editors who want to see whether archives are set up on a talk page is higher than you think.
And again, I don't see why you aren't arguing this for the list of archive subpages, the wikilink list.

I was replying to "It could be an optional parameter to show something when there are no archives yet. That lets the page editors decide.

That's a parallel discussion on improving {{archives}}, comments which Timeshifter decided to copy and paste here, not exactly sure why. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:42, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"disappear after a week" – your fantasy scenario is still entirely implausible, and this change isn't going to have a meaningful effect.
Either way, someone could leave a comment on a (brand new and never archived but somehow extremely high traffic) talk page, have the same aggressive archiving set up either just before they left or while they were gone, and then come back a week later to find their post has been archived. In either case they weren't going to have been looking at the talk header box before they commented to figure out what the bot config was, and in either case after they come back there will already be archives (that's the entire premise here). With or without this change the person is going to be identically confused (or not) and presented with identical information on their return. –jacobolus (t) 03:49, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

your fantasy scenario is still entirely implausible

How? Archive durations are very commonly one-week, and there exists talk pages with so little activity that they haven't had archives yet. I didn't say it would need to be high traffic. My scenario is more common than yours, especially given that the editor doesn't guess that it was automatic archiving yet and thus is new and is more likely to read the talk header before their first comment. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:54, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The situation you are imagining requires all of these to happen, in this order:
  1. A brand new but very high traffic page has extremely (over)aggressive archiving set up by some zealous editor
  2. A novice reader navigates to the page before the bot has a chance to ever run on it, and makes careful note of the bot config mentioned at the top of the page
  3. The reader leaves a comment, now expecting their comment to disappear because they did a close analysis of the bot config
  4. The reader goes away for a week, during which time there are 5+ more separate discussion topics added and the bot then archives the topic where the reader's comment was left
  5. The reader comes back to the page and their comment is gone, but, because our change to the template saved the day, avoids confusion.
This seems extremely implausible to me, to the point were I doubt, in the situation where this change goes through, it will ever happen even a single time. #1, #2, #3, and #4 are each independently rare, and their combination is vanishingly unlikely. –jacobolus (t) 04:34, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jacobolus: Page editors can put {{archives}} on a page that has an archive bot set up. And even before an archive has been created, the archive bot or banner shows up.

I am not wedded to the option to allow the same in {{talk header}}, but I believe many page editors would want that. I was just trying to give them that option. You apparently don't want to give them that option. Let's let other editors here weigh in. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:57, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am indifferent about {{archives}}. It's used on fewer than a tenth as many pages as {{talk header}}, it's relatively out of the way in a narrow right-floating box, and I've never seen it used when there weren't already archives. Feel free to advocate hiding this one when there aren't yet any archives. –jacobolus (t) 05:22, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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