User:Xiong/Archist

Hi! I appreciate your desire to keep Talk pages neat and tidy, or at least short enough to load -- I'm the same way. May I offer a suggestion?

Every Talk page's history records all prior versions, but there is no fast way for a visitor to see which versions existed just prior to cleanup. Many Wikipedians archive to history in a two-step process:

• Remove outdated comments, or blank page entirely. Save the page. (You must do this in order to create a specific link to the prior version.) You might like to add a temporary comment, such as "Archival in progress -- please do not edit".

• Open history, and copy out the link location of the last state of the page. Insert this in the newly-cleaned page at the very top, in single brackets, as an external link (e.g., [http://......]). You might like to add the date of the prior version.

This way, any visitor can go quickly to any prior version of the Talk. This is important, since otherwise some users may suggest that you are simply blanking unwelcome comment. Don't forget to check to see if some other user has added a comment while you have been archiving; be sure to preserve it.

Thank you!