Help:Archiving a talk page

When you reckon your Teflpedia:User talk page is getting too long, you may archive it. The choice of archive style is personal, but remember that it's considered courteous to leave a link to the archived page.

Cut and paste style
To archive a Talk page onto a subpage, we can cut old stuff from the Talk page and paste it into a subpage of the Talk page, as follows:


 * 1) Type  at top of the Talk page you wish to archive (unless someone else already has). Adjust those dates as appropriate
 * 2) Cut all the old Talk page entries to your computers virtual clipboard, ie cut (select and then Ctrl+X) all Talk entries starting just above the first 2012 entry (or current year) all the way to the top (oldest entry).
 * 3) Click Save page
 * 4) Click the Archive: 2009-2011 link at top right
 * 5) Paste (Ctrl+V) the old Talk stuff into this archive page
 * 6) Click Save page

Done!

"Move" style
See Help:Archiving your User talk page: "move" style for more details To move all your old Talk page stuff and its associated History entries to a subpage (this leaves you with a fresh slate on your Talk page) use Move.


 * 1) On the Talk page to be archived, click the tab (click the triangle at left of Search box, above right)
 * 2) In "To new title" field add "/2009-2011" to the page name (adjust those dates as appropriate and don't forget the slash "/")
 * 3) Uncheck the "Leave a redirect behind" box
 * 4) Click Move page button at bottom
 * 5) Return to the now empty Talk page, and add  (adjust those dates as appropriate to match)
 * 6) Click Save page

Done!

Not to worry; if anything goes wrong, try again. The "View history" tab on the Talk page takes you back to previous versions of the Talk page.

Mass delete style
This is the obvious choice for busy folks but it is not the preferred option:


 * 1) Just delete old stuff from the Talk page. To read it again later, just click "View history". When you "mass delete" lots of Talk threads this way, put something visually obvious in the "Summary" field (below the edit box) like "DELETED LOTS OF OLD STUFFHERE" to help keep the 'History' useful.
 * 2) To let others know where stuff is (and isn't), simply put  or something to that effect at top of that Talk page.