Template talk:archive box

Usage
I suggest creating specific sub-templates that set, and  (and maybe ), and then using those with just the  parameter, but you may use this directly on talk pages too. Conrad.Irwin 19:07, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Otherwise, use, which sets many of these with sensible defaults. Conrad.Irwin 19:16, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Template:archive box, Template:archive box top, Template:archive box bottom
The replacement for these is the pair: and. aWa already uses these two, if you noticed. The benefits of using them are that you no longer have to worry about escaping  and   characters. Also, fewer templates means fewer changes needed when archive categories are to be reorganised for some reason.

The above templates can be simply substituted to yield their replacement; some are already orphaned.

— Keφr 12:40, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose deleting these templates. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:36, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And the argument for that which Polansky put at BP instead of here (where it belongs) is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Except that in this case it is definitely not "ain't broke". Every once in a while when someone puts "|" inside a discussion it fails to display properly in the archive box because someone failed to remember/realise they should use . Splitting the archive box into two templates eliminates that problem. But who cares about that if I dislike the nominator? — Keφr 11:07, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The accurate quotation of the complete sentence from Beer parlour is this: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and don't make the markup longer." --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:30, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Seeing that you only objected to the incomplete quotation, I assume you entirely agree with the rest. Thank you for dropping your opposition. — Keφr 11:36, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For the record and the reader, I did not drop my opposition; I still oppose deleting these templates. I have to admit that dealing with the inflammatory style of the above speaker stretches some of my capabilities. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:51, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete, can't believe nobody's thought to do this before, it's so simple. Renard Migrant (talk) 13:52, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. I don't see an urgent reason to delete these, rather than deprecate them, including removing them from membership in the categories in which they reside in favor of the same name preceded by "deprecated". But can a bot accomplish the conversion reliably? Presumably the functionality of  could also be replaced. DCDuring TALK  16:31, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * (@DCDuring: ping fail. See mw:Help:Echo.) After Category:Archive boxes needing attention is emptied, the replacement is trivial, just the templates.  will be harder to do. — Keφr 16:38, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That doesn't exactly answer my question. Can a bot be made to do the operation reliably or does it need to be done manually? If a bot can't do it, who will? If no one volunteers, why not just deprecate the inferior, older templates. If the 346 or so transclusions of can't be bot-replaced, that might be something for me to get started on. DCDuring TALK  17:02, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As I said, templates nominated above can be simply ed, which can be done with a regex replacement, and I have made some preparations to make this process lossless. The problem with is with finding where the archived discussion ends (i.e. where to put ). It would be reasonable to assume that the discussion spans from the  template to the end of the section. This is possible to implement, but a bit tricky. — Keφr 17:37, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Your answers may seem to you to have answered my questions, but they presuppose more knowledge about the power of tools than I have. As I interpret your answers, the specific answer to my question is: "No. A bot can't do it, but there are semi-automated methods that << >> could use to reduce the time and effort required." If that "No" should be a "Yes", please forgive me for not understanding. DCDuring TALK 17:57, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, for starters I am not sure what "it" is, so I am answering two questions at once.
 * The nominated templates can be losslessly substituted in place, which is a matter of purely mechanical text replacement: " " → " ", which triggers MediaWiki to generate the updated wikimarkup. Yes, a bot can do it. (You just need to take care of erroneous template usages first, but I have already dealt with those.)
 * Orphaning would require guessing where the  template should go. The best method would be probably by inspecting page histories, but I doubt that can be made into a reliable algorithm. Or you could just assume that archived discussions span the whole level 2 section (or make some other "educated" guess), but this assumption is just that, an assumption.
 * Hope this helps. — Keφr 19:02, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I did not know for sure that subst:ing could be done by bot without a problem and that you had already eliminated anything that didn't conform to the requirements for subst:ing or didn't otherwise fail. Both of those are what I wanted to know. I think others would want to know too so that they could also support the proposal.
 * I wouldn't bother with . Arguably it's less useful for the tea room discussions and the list of items is not terribly long.
 * Delete per nom. DCDuring TALK 19:57, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete for the reasons for and against given by the various participants. —CodeCat 20:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Template:archived
Everything I wrote above also applies to this template. — Keφr 12:18, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

All orphaned and deleted. — Keφr 09:25, 22 December 2014 (UTC)