User talk:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo

Implication that a consensus is required

The {{Consensus}} box says, "Before setting up automatic archiving on an article's talk page, please establish a consensus that archiving is really needed there." Can we please find a way to soften that language a bit? I tend to work on low-traffic (read: neglected) articles, many of which have dozens of decrepit threads dating back to the early days of Wikipedia (e.g. 2004 through 2008). Archiving these has never been controversial, in my experience. — voidxor 19:23, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

First off, neither the guideline nor WP:ARCHIVE, the help page for archiving talk pages, says anything extra about achieving consensus over and beyond our general guidelines. That said, this is User:Σ's bot. If he feels extra care is warranted, so be it. It's not that he is likely to attempt to enforce this, or that he could even if he wanted. My guess is back in the dawn of time when the concept of auto-archiving was new, Σ got tired about getting involved in editor arguments caused by his bot being used. You could go ahead and BOLDLY soften the language. If you get reverted, I suggest leaving it as-is, and then simply ignoring that to keep doing your good work. CapnZapp (talk) 20:17, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

 Done, thanks! I changed "an article's talk page" to "a high-traffic article's talk page". — voidxor 19:42, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Feature request: implement "Archive now"

The documentation here doesn't state whether {{Archive now}} is supported by lowercase sigmabot III. Would be good to add if it is, and maybe worth implementing if it isn't. AncientWalrus (talk) 12:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

If the bot does support it then yes. Otherwise, well, if you think about it, doesn't it make more sense to not require bot documentation to list all the things the bot doesn't do. Instead, the list of bots that do support the functionality belongs squarely at Template:Archive_now/doc if you ask me. CapnZapp (talk) 13:00, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

It's not supported. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:08, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Likely the editor writing the documentation for {{Archive now}} was overly optimistic. The lesson learnt here is: it isn't enough to just wish for things to happen.

I've edited the template's documentation. In fact, a case could be made the template should not exist (as a general-purpose template), since it likely only works for pages archived by ClueBot. Compare {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} where it is much more clear the template is tied to a specific archive bot. CapnZapp (talk) 14:02, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

ClueBot III has a facility whereby it can archive sections earlier than they would normally be archived, if they contain certain templates. This facility is used at Wikipedia:Closure requests, where we find that the {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} has been given the parameter

|archivenow=<!-- <nowiki>{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}},{{resolved,{{Resolved,{{done,{{Done,{{DONE,{{already done,{{Already done,{{not done,{{Not done,{{close,{{Close,{{nd,{{xXxX</nowiki> -->

This means that if any thread contains any one of {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} (with no parameters), {{resolved}} (possibly with params), {{Resolved}} (possibly with params), {{done}} (possibly with params), etc. etc., it becomes eligible for archive on the next bot run. It has bugs and features: first, it's case-sensitive and won't follow redirects (which is why we need {{resolved,{{Resolved and the others that seem redundant); second, if it matches those characters, it doesn't care about what comes after, so if somebody uses {{ndash}} in a thread, that thread would be archived just as if the thread had contained {{nd}}; third, it ignores the last one in the list, which is why that dummy {{xXxX is there. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:53, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

More information can always be useful so thanks. I note that you use {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} over there - not {{Archive now}}, which is the template we're discussing here. Perhaps this strengthens the argument this latter template shouldn't exist. Its existence appears based on the assumption that the talk page where it is entered will somehow archive. But this is not the case. Unless there is more facts to be had I see only two cases where this can be true: either that the page is archived automatically (and that the bot in charge is ClueBot AND that its parameters is set up correctly), or, of course, that a fellow editor sees your requests and archives the talk section manually. Perhaps a reasonable course of action would be for its documentation to release the connection to ClueBot and just refer to the manual case... but then I wonder if it isn't better to teach a man how to fish than to just give him one; meaning that perhaps the editor could simply use our various help templates to gain assistance and perhaps even learn how to set up automatic archiving themselves...? CapnZapp (talk) 06:09, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

My point was that ClueBot III looks for an explicit list, so if at Wikipedia:Closure requests we had used

|archivenow=<!-- <nowiki>{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}},{{Archive now,{{resolved,{{Resolved,{{done,{{Done,{{DONE,{{already done,{{Already done,{{not done,{{Not done,{{close,{{Close,{{nd,{{xXxX</nowiki> -->

it would detect uses of {{Archive now}} (capitalised exactly thus) and archive any threads in which it occurred. So the template can be used to trigger archiving, provided that the page has been set up accordingly. I don't know of an easy way to look for those. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:18, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes. And my point was that any template can (apparently) fill this use. Even  Self-whale... for when a trout just isn't enough would work. This template, however, is "Requesting immediate archiving". If it was meant to ask other humans to perform this request, then fine. But the previous documentation kind of passively-aggressively hoped to shame other bot creators into supporting its use (and completely downplayed how difficult it is to make ClueBot compliant). When I had a look, it appeared not even ClueBot needed this template, since there was (and is) {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}. Previously, my thinking was "let's remove this template". My current thinking is "let's keep it for when a user wants archiving but is unsure how to do it themselves". Either way, the documentation should keep the intended usage clear. At least now, the documentation doesn't imply other bots than ClueBot supports the template, or that archiving magically happens by just adding the template to the page. So that's an improvement at least. The documentation still downplays the intricacies of how to get it to work, chiefly because ClueBot's documentation does. But leaving this as is would be tolerable, at least for me. CapnZapp (talk) 14:48, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

bot cadence

In the "After you have set up archiving" section our page claims "The bot runs once a day at a preset hour"

Has there been any changes to the cadence of the bot lately?

I know that from my time zone's perspective, the bot used to always have run during the night, but lately I seem to find pages which remain untouched by the bot even though I added archiving instructions "yesterday".

Has the "preset hour" changed recently? CapnZapp (talk) 13:41, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: Which page is this on? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:08, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Template talk:Algebraic notation. (The bot did do its job, the question is "why did this only happen today and not yesterday?") Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 11:01, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

"Special" user talk subpages

Hi, I was wondering if there was a method to sort talk page messages into different subpages by category. If you see my user talk page, you can see that there are multiple headers which I place messages into and have corresponding archive subpages (see accomplishments archives and miscellaneous archives). I was wondering if there was a way to have the bot place archives in their respective subpage by the category it is sorted into. Thanks,Neuropol^Talk 17:03, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@Neuropol, whether or not a talk page section fits into one of your categories is not something that Lowercase sigmabot III can decide automatically.

To make the process of manual archival into the subpages easier, you can use One click archiving. For example, user script User:Enterprisey/archiver prompts the user for the name of the destination page. —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:02, 29 April 2024 (UTC)