Forum:Archiving

This vote is regarding the status of archives on the wiki.

For those who do not know, archives are where finished, abandoned, or overflowing roleplays go to free up space on the main page. All Hogwarts archives are cleared at the end of each IC year, and the archives on the rest of the wiki are only cleared as needed.

Archives are not a permanent solution to save roleplays, as eventually they will be cleared out one way or another - which makes saving links to the page history a much more permanent solution to saving roleplays, because links to the page history will show what the page contained at the time of that edit, which is content that will not change.

For those who do not know, page history is a complete log of each and every edit to a certain page, and if you click on the date/time of the edit you want to look at, you will see the page as it looked at that exact time and date. (If you click on the dropdown next to the edit button, history is one of the options, and if you click history you will see the log in question.)

This vote will close on Sunday, June 23rd, 2019. 17:49, June 16, 2019 (UTC)

Option One
Release how-to guides for archiving pages and accessing/saving page histories. This will help users save important roleplays as well as help keep roleplay pages clear of finished or abandoned roleplays.

Option Two
Release how-to guides for archiving pages and accessing/saving page histories. This will help users save important roleplays as well as help keep roleplay pages clear of finished or abandoned roleplays.

Also clear out all wiki archives once per OOC year. This will free up space in the archives and make it easier to find an empty archive to put old roleplays in, as well as allow us to get rid of unneeded archive pages.

Option Two
Release how-to guides for accessing/saving page histories. This will help users save important roleplays.

Do away with archiving altogether. This will eliminate a lot of excess and unneeded pages from the wiki.

Comments
One concern with doing away with archiving would be incomplete roleplays - for instance, when the template size exceeds the page but the roleplay isn't finished. An easy solution to this is to simply put a link to the history that shows the part of the roleplay you're clearing under the roleplay header so you can easily refer back to it if needed, and then just clear the page for more posts.

To me, archiving serves no purpose. Any purpose archiving serves, linking the page history can do better. Even the old Long Term Archives would be better done as page histories - those important roleplays could simply be linked as page histories in a special section. Page histories do not change and, ultimately, are easier to track than archives that can easily get bits and pieces of longer roleplays mixes up.