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Archiving is the process of moving historical or less frequently accessed content from a primary storage location to a secondary storage location for long-term retention. In the context of MediaWiki, archiving is commonly used to manage the size and relevance of content on discussion pages, such as talk pages, village pumps, and other community discussion areas.

Purpose of Archiving

The main purposes of archiving in a wiki environment include:

Improving page load times by reducing the amount of data that needs to be processed each time a page is accessed.
Keeping discussions manageable and relevant.
Preserving historical discussions for future reference without cluttering active discussion areas.

Methods of Archiving

There are several methods used to archive content in MediaWiki:

Manual Archiving

Manual archiving involves physically moving content from the active page to an archive page. This is often done by cutting and pasting the text from one page to another. Manual archiving allows for selective archiving and is often used when specific discussions are concluded or no longer active.

Automated Archiving

Automated archiving uses bots or scripts to automatically move older content to archive pages based on certain criteria, such as the age of the discussion or the size of the page. Popular tools for automated archiving include:

These tools typically work by adding an archiving template to the top of a discussion page, which specifies the rules for archiving, such as the age threshold for archiving discussions.

Incremental Archiving

Incremental archiving is a method where only parts of the page are archived, typically the oldest sections, while newer discussions remain on the main page. This method is useful for pages with ongoing discussions that also accumulate significant historical content.

Archiving Best Practices

To effectively manage archives in a MediaWiki environment, consider the following best practices:

Clearly label archive pages with descriptive titles and indexing to facilitate easy retrieval.
Provide links to archives from the main discussion page and vice versa to ensure that users can easily navigate between current discussions and historical records.
Regularly monitor archive processes, whether manual or automated, to ensure that content is being archived appropriately and that the archive pages are not becoming overly cumbersome.