UESPWiki:Archive/CP New Archiving

New Archiving
As the UESP ages, archiving pages has become a major task, and organizing them has become an increasingly large problem, most notably on the Community Portal. Nobody wants to wade through a large number of old discussions at the top of an active page, but the current system of archiving date-to-date doesn’t say much about the content of the pages. Therefore, I think we should create a new system as follows:

Archive Page
Community Portal (Header)
Archive by Date (Secondary Header)
List of Archives by Date
Archive by Subject (Secondary Header)
Server Issues
Relations with other sites
Policy Issues
Dealing with Stupidity – Anonymous Users and Content Problems
IRC Issues
Issues between Members

Administrative Notice Board 
Archive by Date (Secondary Header)
List of Archives by Date
Archive by Subject (Secondary Header)
Vandalism
Requests for User Privileges Changes
Policy Issues
Discipline Archive

Advantages
# Unified Archive- The Community Portal and Administrative Notice board often have similar discussions, so a unified Archive makes sense.
# Easier Access to Archives- Archives done by content will make it easier to find what has already been said about topics
# Easier Access to Active topics- Less clutter at the top of the page
# Update Links- Implementing this system would kill two birds with one stone so to speak, if we updated the links in the archive at the same time.

Cons
# More work to archive pages

Details
;Links to Archive- 
There would still be links to the Archive Page at the top of the both pages (Community Portal and Administrator Noticeboard), as well as links to the two most recent Archives by date.

;Updated Links-
These could be done either by changing the original link or by inserting the correct link after the original like  link  

;Discipline Archive-
Several people have recently called the pasting of warnings to a user page an attempt to “embarass users”. Personally, I don’t think the policy was written with that in mind, but they do have a point. Therefore, dated warning messages can be removed from a user page, if that user has stayed out of trouble for a month, and placed in the archive. The main purpose of keeping the messages close to the user page was to allow people to know they are dealing with a person that has been known to violate UESP policy. If they’ve been clean for a month, chances are that they’ve changed their ways enough to remove the warning. Of course, reminding Administrators to do the moving will be totally up to the Users in question.

;Actual Pages-
Each discussion would be a page, like  , and then transcribed to the relevant pages. Categories could be added to the individual pages to show the content of the discussion.

Suggestions
So, what does everyone think? --Ratwar 15:26, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

:Overall, I like the idea... although I think it will take someone with a bit of motivation to get it set up and start to convert at least some of the existing material to the new format ;)  Basically, I agree that we really do need a way to make it easier to find old discussions on various topics.... I know I regularly find myself going through every archive of this page to try to find old discussions that I remember as establishing the community consensus for various issues.
:Just to clarify (or perhaps) tweak some details, let me outline what my understanding.  So next time this page gets archived,
:* The entire "Transparent Namespaces" section would get moved to its own page, with a name like   
:* "Proposal: Recommended Mod Lists" would get moved to   
:* Ditto for the rest of the page discussions
:* A by-date archive listing would be created, say    (or    if we're trying to make this a more unified system?).  The contents of that page would be:
  
:* The new individual archive pages would also be added to (transcluded into) by-topic listings.  I'd guess we'd probably add to Ratwar's list of topics as the system evolves, I'd think topics like "Site Organization" and "New Articles" might perhaps work for these two specific examples.
:I'd suggest that there are a few discussions that wouldn't need the full treatment.  Just as an example,  was a one-time question that has been addressed and I can't imagine ever needing any followup (at least not in the community portal... if anywhere, at ).  Those could perhaps just be copied directly into the by-date archive listing.
:Also (once the basics get put in place), there are a handful of other places where I've noticed important discussions pop up; those discussions could also get incorporated into this unified archive.  For example, in  some decisions were made that continue to be relevant.  I'd suggest that discussion could be moved to its own page within the archive (probably with a note about the original source of the discussion), then transcluded back into  (so those archives continue to be a complete record of that page's discussions), and also be transcluded into any relevant topics.

:I also think the Discipline Archive could be useful.  I think any user who is actively blocked needs to continue to have the blocked notice (and probably any warnings that led to the block) still on their page: they are not members of the community and it needs to be clear why not.  But users who have moved past a warning/temporary block and have since been contributing productively to the wiki shouldn't need to have out-of-date warnings prominently advertised on their user pages.  One month sounds like a reasonable time frame.  I doubt/hope there will never be a large number of users in that category, but just the principle of letting users know that they can (mostly) clear their names is important.  Moving the notices to an archive (instead of just deleting) is necessary so that in the future admins can find the information when needed without too much effort.  The archive page should perhaps have an explanation at the top that the warnings are not considered to be active any more, but are being kept just for record-keeping.
:So, that's my feedback for now... long and verbose as always :) --Nephele  17:35, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

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I think that maintentance cost would be too high. I think that everything is already pretty well handled by current system. Keep in mind that the active topic can be used more than we have been using it. E.g., my original itention was that the Copyright subtopic be kept under Major Discussions because it perenially arises -- and later questions often tie back to earlier issues. Server issues might also be kept a single topic, but server issues are more usually new issues each time. 

Another possibility is that at the top of any topic (current and/or archived) there could be links back to previously archived topics and/or related topics). Most topics won't require this, so such links can just be added on an as-needed basis.

Searching: A secondary consideration is searching -- how easy is it to find a past conversation that you knew you had? This really is a search functionality question. Current search seems to be pretty good -- so long as use appropriate checkboxes at bottom of dialog. But perhaps some technical things could be done to make it a little more accurate or easier to configure. (Just an "uncheck all" or "check all talk pages" might help.)

Another possibility is adding topic collation pages as necessary (as I did for Dispute and Wikiscrolls). 

In general, UI and development wise, you have a low end with little organization -- but requires no maintenance. And then a high end -- much more organized, but less flexible and requires more maintenance. Better is in-between -- and adaptive system where you can add more order as needed, but leave most stuff less ordered. I think our current system does that pretty well. I think that what you're suggesting it too much on the high order/high maintenance cost side.

That's my two bits... --Wrye 19:57, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

:You bring up some good points Wrye. I have definitely wondered if such a system is worth the amount of time spent doing it, but my conclusion is still different than yours. The main reason I'm making the proposal is that while I like adding topic collation pages, I hate adding them to the top of the page. It makes the space seem cluttered, as do the ever increasing number of archives. I want to eliminate this clutter. My other complaint is that the current system is in large part useless. We have an archive system for record keeping purposes. I think it makes sense to have a filing system for the records. 

:In any case, do you mind me updating some of the archives, even if you feel it would take too much maintenance? If the system proves too unwieldy, future archive will simply not be converted to the new system. --Ratwar 13:32, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

:: Go ahead. I've made my points, but I could be wrong. Trial is the best test. --Wrye 20:16, 23 April 2007 (EDT)