Template talk:Archive

Template:Archive is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories. Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Archive template.

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Archives: 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 2 months

This template was nominated for merging. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination: Merge, 2023 December 7, see discussion. No consensus, 2020 August 24, see discussion.

Template:Annual archive now redirects to this template

Latest comment: 3 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Per the discussions at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 April 25#Template:Annual archive, {{annual archive}} redirects to this template. Its various parameters are not needed by {{archive}} because Module:Archive extracts them from the page title. In the merge proposal, I mentioned several ways to change to the blurb text generated by this template:

• The |text= parameter will replace the default blurb with anything an editor writes.
• It's not yet in the documentation, but {{archive|type=archive}} will give nearly the same language as used by the former {{annual archive}}. Nobody mentioned a desire for this ability or objected to it in the merge discussion. If "type=archive" goes unused, it can be removed from the module.

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 01:37, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Is there a way to turn off __NONEWSECTIONLINK__, as it used to be in the annual archive? I used it specifically because it didn't have this option. Primefac (talk) 12:50, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Primefac It looks like __NOEDITSECTION____NONEWSECTIONLINK____ARCHIVEDTALK__ were added to Template:Annual archives over the past few years [1][2] to match {{archive}}. Module:Archive#L-452 will suppress them with {{archive|demospace=yes}}. This was added by Gonnym, but I don't think it's documented on the /doc page. What's the use case for needing new section links on a page with an archive banner? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 01:53, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

When I'm adding archives for WP:AFCH requests it's easier to "new section" it rather than edit and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. Since it's a limited-use case I'll just demospace it, thanks. Primefac (talk) 08:43, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Template:Talk archive used to work better

Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I set up my talk page archives with arbitrary names. I created a page User talk:Anomalocaris/archivelist, with contents

:[[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2006–2013|2006–2013]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2014|2014]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2015|2015]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2016|2016]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2017|2017]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2018|2018]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2019|2019]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2020|2020]] • [[User talk:Anomalocaris/Archive 2021|2021]]

which displays as

2006–2013 • 2014 • 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021

This page is explicitly linked by User talk:Anomalocaris, where the page begins

{{Archives | archivelist = /archivelist | search=yes}}

This creates an Archives search box in the upper right corner of my user talk page. I strongly believe that this affected my user talk archive pages as well. At the top, they all begin

{{Talk archive}}

Maybe I'm wrong, but I though that this used to automatically display the contents of User talk:Anomalocaris/archivelist. But now, the first archive page, with a less-standard name, has no horizontal list of wikilinked archive pages, and the rest of the archive pages, with year-numbered names, have a horizontal list of wikilinked archive pages, omitting the non-standard 2006–2013. Am I right that a capability was removed, and if so, is there still a way to get the behavior I used to get, and if it was removed and there is no current markup that works, please restore the old system that did work. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:57, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Anomalocaris Older versions of the template would have made no navigational links on those archived talk pages. The template initially did not make navigational links, and then only made them for sequential archives. The recent change was to add navigational links on archives that end with a plausible year.

To get the old behavior back, you can add |omit=archives to suppress the navigational links. If you want to transclude that userspace list of archives, you could use {{archive|omit=archives}}{{center|{{User talk:Anomalocaris/archivelist}}}} either on an archive page, or on a separate userpsace page to be transcluded.

Hope that helps, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 01:44, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Rjjiii: Thank you, very helpful.   Done I updated my archive pages as you suggested. —Anomalocaris (talk) 02:37, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Bug report

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse § Archive header is wrong. Sdkb ^talk 04:47, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Red links

Latest comment: 3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The default situation is that an archive page does not have red links for future archives. As someone who manually archives, I find it cumbersome and awkward not to have a redlink so I can quickly and easily and accurately create the next archive. To ready the archive page for future manual archiving I have to add |noredlinks=no to the template. It's a minor thing, but an irritation nevertheless, as it's simply extra work that should not be necessary.

I've not looked back to see why it was made default that red links are not displayed. I can see that it would be acceptable if archives on a page were all automated, but if the archives are manually done then showing the red link would be of more benefit. Clicking on the red link immediately creates a new archive with the correct name and number (editors do make mistakes in naming and numbering which causes problems). Having a red link might also encourage editors to create a new archive page when the existing one is getting long (I do sometimes come upon some very long archive pages).

It is of course possible that other than auto-archiving there are reasons why not having a redlink is preferable for manual archiving, though other than personal taste I can't at the moment think of one.

Provided there are no practical issues with displaying a red link on an archive page which is not auto archived, would it be possible to default the template to displaying the red link? There may need to be some consideration given to the auto archiving software if defaulting to red links might cause problems there. SilkTork (talk) 19:09, 25 August 2025 (UTC)Reply