Wikipedia talk:Spoiler/Archiving debate

Archiving

Please explain why this page needs an automated archiving bot when there are thousands of talk pages on Wikipedia, including high-profile ones like Wikipedia Talk:No original research, which have longer talk pages. Postmodern Beatnik has already complained about his discussion being archived before he could finish it.--Nydas^(Talk) 19:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, apologies for inadvertently removing your comments in the last revert. I should have watched for comments, and I failed to do so.

Secondly the page is more than 85kb in size, and I'd like to avoid it getting any larger. I've set the archiving period to a generous eight days. That means that a section is archived if there have been no new comments in more than a week and one day.

Thirdly I've tried manually archiving sections but you have reverted several sections over six days old, and even two archived after over seven days without new comments, calling the archiving "heavy-handed and pointless". I know not why, but I hoped that you'd find archiving by bot less heavy and more objective.

The page size does need to be kept under control, and the archives contain all discussions, so there's no reason we shouldn't agree a reasonable archive period. If eight days isn't enough, try ten. --Tony Sidaway 19:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

There are thousands of longer talk pages on Wikipedia. Why is this one being singled out?--Nydas^(Talk) 19:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I've no idea what you mean. This page isn't being singled out, except in the sense that if I'm going to be regularly loading it I don't want it to be ridiculously large and full of dead discussions. --Tony Sidaway 20:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The talk pages on WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NPOV are much longer than this one. Why have you not applied the same standard to them? Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons (which you are involved in) is the same size and yet has no archiving bot.--Nydas^(Talk) 20:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it does, but doesn't have a template.--Nydas^(Talk) 20:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I find very long talk pages an obstacle to comprehension, for the same reason that very long articles are discouraged. The fact that some long talk pages aren't regularly archived doesn't mean that their example ought to be emulated. Marc Shepherd 20:18, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I haven't edited Wikipedia talk:Verifiability, Wikipedia talk:No original research and Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view regularly. I last edited the first of those two or three times just over year ago, when the page was about 70kb in size. I last edited the NOR talk page, less than half a dozen edits in all, at about the same time. The page was around 100kb in size. As for the latter page, the talk page of NPOV, it has not seen an edit by me in its last 5,000 edits.

Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons, which I have edited on some occasions since late April, ballooned up from 40kb to about 400kb during the denoument of a related arbitration case, the Badlydrawnjeff arbitration, until it was manually archived by User:Slim Virgin [1]. I installed Miszabot archiving immediately afterwards, on 26 June of this year [2]. Often a very busy page, in its set fourteen day archiving period, it veers between approximately 250kb maximum in busy discussions and its current minimum of about 90kb, during a lull. --Tony Sidaway 21:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I set the archiving period parameter to 8 days during a time when I think the Talk:Spoiler page was much more active and ballooning. But as I previously mentioned, the problem with automatic archiving is that a slowing topic will go to zero posts. That will leave no threads to indicate where the last previous wave of debates came to a lull, when new editors arrive to join the next discussion wave.

To solve this problem, I think Mizabot needs two additional threshold parameters to set:

• The minimum kilobyte page size below which unposted-to-topic archiving does not activate. Takes precedence over minimum number of discussion topics, since a few topics have gotten very fat.
• The minimum number of discussion topics below which unposted-to-topic archiving does not activate. Leaves a minimum number of unposted-to-topics, unless minimum kilobyte page size is exceeded.

Theoretically, an editable consensus could be reached and top-posted on doing this manually, until/if the Mizabot programmer implements those additional threshold parameters. A semi-manual method would be for concerned editors to turn Mizabot on or off using those top-posted parameters. Milo 22:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If the discussion comes to an end and the archiver puts everything into the archive, that is a good thing. The archiver is operating as intended. Discussions that become stale shouldn't be kept around forever. The archives are always there. --Tony Sidaway 23:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

We should agree to disagree. Such extreme tidyness has costs. I think extra clicks to locate and access an archive is unnecessary navigation work and discourages discussion. Most WP talk pages I've seen work by default the way I've described. Some low-interest articles discuss very slowly, and might not communicate if archived the way you suggest. This week I saw several fresh posts to year-old discussions on philosophical issues, in a high interest article that only gets posted in waves. Milo 02:55, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The question remains as why this intrusive archiving system is needed at all. The reason Tony has offered is 'I post here', which doesn't give him the right to apply idiosyncratic philosophies about talk page cleanliness. We've already had one person complain about their discussion being lost, that should be an end to the matter. It's better to live and let live than applying non-standard archiving bots that mindlessly hurl valid discussion into the dustbin.--Nydas^(Talk) 07:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

(←)I would like to add my voice towards consensus on this. I much prefer that discussions not be archived on an automated schedule (unless a page is growing quickly and becoming unmanageable as this one was a while ago). Digging around in the archives to find prior threads takes extra work. Automated archiving bots are great on fast moving pages like WP:AN, but on a page like this is now, there's no hurry. Let's allow the discussions to remain visibile for editors to follow the debate without extra work. --Parsifal _Hello 08:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps when the page size reduces to a more manageable size, we'll do that. --Tony Sidaway 12:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

What's a manageable size? What happened to your self-invented policy of blank talk pages?--Nydas^(Talk) 13:32, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"What happened to your..." Tony does occasionally moderate his extreme positions, as we all should in process. Applying some carrot here, I think he should be encouraged toward further moderation in the direction of consensus. Milo 16:19, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think the current size is too large, in the sense that someone viewing a discussion for the first time has an awful lot of stuff to wade through, much of which is no longer current. Those of us who've been watching the page daily don't have that problem. But frankly, I'd like to find a way to draw some new blood into this discussion. Right now, we have the same 5 or 6 people repeating themselves ad infinitum. I think that new people find a very long talk page (which this is) somewhat daunting. The automated bot has its drawbacks, but at least it is neutral. If Tony does the archiving manually, the pro-warning camp thinks he's being heavy-handed. Marc Shepherd 15:45, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The current number of topics, 11, looks and feels too small to me for such a complex set of debates. Prior to automated archiving there were about 100, and I thought that was too many to easily sort out the then-currently posted ones.

Technically, without the need to scroll, [the table of contents for] 25 would fill a classic computer screen, and more would fill a hi-res large screen. Milo 16:19, 1 August 2007 (UTC) re-edited 07:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

While there may 11 top-level headings, there aren't really 11 topics. The content under those headings tends to repeat itself over & over again, usually with the same few people making the same points they've always made.

As I suggested in a topic below, there are really only 3 questions: When (if ever) are spoiler warnings/notices appropriate? If they are appropriate, where on the page should they go? And what form should they take? Marc Shepherd 16:51, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I cannot fit all of this single topic on my moderately large computer screen, let alone 25, but I've no idea what that has to do with archiving.

To describe the position that a 100kb page should be regularly archived, as in any way extreme, is nonsensical. Until just a year ago or so, pages that exceeded 32kb in size would show a warning message when edited. A 100kb page load is large by all reasonable standards --Tony Sidaway 16:29, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"To describe the position that a 100kb page should be regularly archived, as in any way extreme, is nonsensical" But I did not so describe.

My quoted phrase was: (Milo 16:19) "What happened to your..." from Nydas' sentence: (Nydas 13:32) "What happened to your self-invented policy of blank talk pages?", in reply to you: (Tony Sidaway 23:29) "If the discussion comes to an end and the archiver puts everything into the archive, that is a good thing" — by which you (Tony) promoted that the archive bot should be allowed to blank the talk page. That is an extreme position since I've never seen that happen anywhere, probably because most editors think archive page blanking is undesireable for the reasons I've previously stated.

"cannot fit all of this single topic on my moderately large computer screen, let alone 25," Pardon, I was referring to the table of contents box for 25 topics.

"no idea what that has to do with archiving" If one can see all the topics displayed at once in the table of contents, and if one can also recall those in which one is posting or desires to post, then archiving is unnecessary even for stale topics. This recall can still be done by scrolling the TOC, but at some point the sheer number of topics challenges one's memory and it takes excessive time for scrolling. Milo 07:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I certainly agree that this page needs regular updating, as Safari can crash on these pages- granted, its an older version (1.3) but I don't think everyone has the fastest browser out there. Secondly, Nydas, why the hell are you arguing about automatic talk page archiving? Have you decided that since arguing the actual guideline is "pointless", you're going to argue about increasingly fickle stuff? David Fuchs ^(talk) 16:50, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

True or not, it renews suspicion under the previous hot topic of supressing spoiler tag debate. Milo 07:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

That is not what you were doing, you were archiving six-day old discussions as 'stagnant' when the page was only 87K, and you have suggested that blanking is a desirable outcome for the page. The archives are longer than 100K (by a lot), should they be archived themselves?--Nydas^(Talk) 16:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I believe it's desirable that the talk page reflect the actual state of discussion rather than continue to contain stale discussions. If there are no further discussions, there is no need for anything to be on the talk page and eventually any archive scheme is going to result in a blank page. To parody that as being in favor of "talk page blanking", as you have done once or twice, and repeat above, is amusing but not productive.

I was archiving discussions which, you seem to admit, had not had a single new comment in six days. I don't see anything wrong with that, but I've set the bot archive period to eight days, and I don't see why you shouldn't increase it to any reasonable value if you want. --Tony Sidaway 23:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The goal of archiving is not to clean up pages. It's to clean up pages which have become excessively large and unnavigable. There is no reason why old discussion should be archived, in and of itself. The benefit of keeping recent "dead" topics available for perusal is that redundant discussions can be avoided or, if unresolved, re-opened. If rampant archiving becomes the norm, we may all find ourselves rehashing the same arguments every few days (if we aren't already...) Girolamo Savonarola 23:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"eventually any archive scheme is going to result in a blank page" and "To parody that as being in favor of "talk page blanking..." Hmm. You favor using an archive scheme which results in blanking the talk page, yet I-hear-you-saying you aren't in favor of "talk page blanking", {shrug} it's just an archiving side effect that the talk page ends up blank. That strikes me as a Clintonesque parsing of statements that you need to either own outright or moderate your position. Milo 07:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Girolamo Savonarola. There is no reason to move topics off this page because they are not recent. This topic clearly is of interest to many, since new editors continually add comments. What's the hurry to blank this page?

Even Wikipedia developers tell us: Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. We're talking about pages of 100KB plain text. Let's be realistic - that's only a couple seconds of broadband time. How much data is on an average Amazon.com page? I just checked and their main page tonight came in at around 600KB, and their main page is smaller than most of their product pages.

This page should be archived manually, not by bot, unless it becomes much more active.

A blank talk page is not a goal, a talk page rich with conversation is a plus for Wikipedia. --Parsifal _Hello 07:25, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

arbitrary section break

I just have to say, Tony's position REALLY makes no sense to me either. I *love* to read talk pages on a topic, and I'm far less inclined to go digging through an archive. The way I look at it, leaving old topic on a page is a GOOD thing, especially when there's not much discussion -- it allows people to see the ebb and flow of the discussion, as it were. It also helps avoid rehashing things -- if something two months ago was talked about, but nothing much since, it'd be silly for someone to bring it up again instead of having it right there to read and possibly respond to with new thoughts (and see who shares their own). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 11:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Notwithstanding that, the question is moot at present because the page is increasing in size despite archiving, and the constant discussion is likely too keep it topped up for the forseeable future. If the last person to leave the page is of the persuasion that believes in leaving clutter on talk pages, he can switch off the archiving as his final edit. --Tony Sidaway 13:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

At this point, there is no consensus on archiving by bot. Currently, more editors have complained about that than supported it, so I removed the bot template. Regarding the comments by some that their browsers crash loading large pages or that they don't like waiting around for the pages to load - that's not a strong argument. 100KB or more is very small for web pages. As I mentioned above, even the Amazon main entry page is usually around 600KB and most of Amazon's pages are larger than that. I checked Ebay tonight and their main page is 500KB. Those companies need maximum users to be able to access them so they can make a profit. Doubtless, they've carefully determined that 500KB or 600KB is no problem for the vast majority of users, so we can easily handle a third of those sizes. And we also have our developers telling us Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. Combine that with editors in this discussion complaining about sections being archived when they still have value to the community for reference and comment, and it seems we do not need automated archiving on this page. --Parsifal _Hello 07:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You can change how many days the bot waits to archive. You're thrown the baby out with the bathwater. -- Ned Scott 07:27, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I see you've re-instated the bot, with a 30 day period. I prefer manual archiving by consensus, per discussion topic. However, I accept your 30 day solution as reasonable compromise. --Parsifal _Hello 07:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

30 days is far, far too long a period. If the archiver had been working consistently on a 30 day archiving period over the current debate, this page would contain every discussion section in which there existed an edit on or since 5 July. This would include at least six sections from archive6 (75 kilobytes) the whole of the contents of archive7 (255 kilobytes) and the whole of archive8 (about 15 kilobytes) plus the whole of its current contents (100 kilobytes). That's a total of 445 kilobytes. A little less rampant stupidity about this would be in order, I think. --Tony Sidaway 09:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Why is having a normal talk page rampant stupidity? Parsifal, Milo, Melodia and Girolamo have made solid arguments, why don't you address them? --Nydas^(Talk) 17:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I wish Tony hadn't used the phrase "rampant stupidity." That said, how many 455k talk pages do we have, and how "normal" is that? Marc Shepherd 17:35, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Attribution/Community discussion is 192KB and has no automated archiving bot. It has one archive page that is 463KB.

Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view is 282KB and has no automated archiving bot. It has many archive pages, done manually by topic and date, some of them are short, but a couple of the archives are 176KB and 244KB.

Those are core policy talk pages with discussion by many respected editors, and they don't seem to find the page size a problem. The question of archiving did not even come up at all on those pages (so far as I have been able to find).

I haven't had time to search for more, but those are two quick examples on important policy pages.

Also - with the bot at 30 days, or if it's disabled, manual archiving can be done when there are sections of the discussion that seem to be resolved and there are not wide objections to archiving them. --Parsifal _Hello 17:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

(in reply to Marc) 455K talk pages aren't normal, but no-one has advocated them.--Nydas^(Talk) 17:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted manual archiving, but it's nearly always reverted. Also the only extant complaint about an ongoing discussion being archived was due to manual archiving when Nydas last turned the archiving bot off. We don't want to have these ridiculous arguments every time someone dares to archive a section, so automation is a more sensible choice.

Archive pages themselves can be as big as you like, 250kb is a popular choice What's important is that the discussion page be kept at a reasonable size. The busier the discussion, the more important that is. Actual page size will depend on the volume of debate, but for a busy and highly repetitive discussion page a six or eight day archiving period is reasonable, up to fourteen days is acceptable.

Somebody set the archiving period to 30 days and someone else accepted that "as a compromise". I showed, with accurate calculations based on real data, that this was "rampantly stupid" because it would end up with a ridiculously large discussion page: I could have added that the page would have contained many redundant repetitions of the same arguments. --Tony Sidaway 18:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You were reverted because you were archiving six-day old discussions on an 87K talk page as 'stagnant', not because the page was getting too long. Your views on talk page cleanliness (including page blanking) have no basis in policy or precedent. Try putting them up for comment elsewhere.--Nydas^(Talk) 18:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

What's important is that the discussion page be kept at a reasonable size. Who determines what is reasonable? I made several comments above regarding specific page sizes and load times, and reasons that size of 100KB is arbitrary, but you didn't reply to any of my points. You also did not reply to the valid debate points of Milo, Melodia and Girolamo. Instead, you have stated your personal determination that you believe "six or eight day archiving period is reasonable, up to fourteen days is acceptable", but you've supplied no basis for that.

Why is it so important to you to shorten the talk page or move prior discussions to less visible locations? The page loads twice as fast as an Amazon or Ebay page and multiples faster than a medium resolution image from the Commons. On an average broadband hookup this page takes under one second. On a moderate cell-phone wireless card it takes maybe two seconds. The TOC allows quick jumps to any section for editing and response. It's pretty clear that there are not technical problems with a larger talk page. That means the issue is not technical. Why do you want the older topics to disappear more quickly? --Parsifal _Hello 19:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I've just reverted another load of archiving by Tony Sidaway, which included hiding this debate on a subpage. There is clearly no consensus for such measures, as this discussion shows.--Nydas^(Talk) 06:30, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

So far, you haven't reverted the archiving, just caused duplication. If you do revert an archiving operation, please make sure to actually remove the threads you claim as "active" from the archive. Kusma (talk) 06:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd still like to know why it's so important to keep this page short... None of the comments or questions above on that topic received replies. Instead, this section was moved to a different page without consensus, after only six days and over the objections of at least five editors. --Parsifal _Hello 07:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I question your apprehension of the word "short". --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 07:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, "short" doesn't exactly apply to this page, you have a point there (and it "short" reads pretty funny in retrospect). The term used in the debate was "reasonable size'', and that's what I had questioned, with examples, and received no replies other than the moving of this discussion . --Parsifal _Hello 07:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Look, I personally have no interest in seeing the page dwindle down to nought, even though there are few signs that that's possible. However, the simple fact is that, despite some archiving being done, this page has grown from 126,354 bytes on 07:54, 21 July 2007 to 171,909 bytes on 07:54, 10 August 2007. The page is far from short; at the current rate of archiving, it will get a lot longer. Something needs to be done. --Mark H Wilkinson ^{(t, c)} 08:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I understand that you are concerned about the page getting too long. But you haven't addressed any of the specific points I made about this in the discussion above, and neither has anyone else. I offered examples of other long talk pages, calculations of very quick page-load times, and other related points, and I asked a couple direct questions as well. So far, none of that has received any replies to the substance. Since the questions and examples are still listed right in this section, just above, I don't want to repeat them. But I am interested in replies about the reasoning for the page being kept to any particular length, because I don't see any problem with interesting extended talk pages on important topics. --Parsifal _Hello 08:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

In view of the spiteful and petty-minded resistance by Nydas to my attempts to maintain this already groaningly large page at a reasonable size by archiving discussions that are long over, I am forced to withdraw from this discussion. There has in any case been no serious debate in several weeks now. --Tony Sidaway 15:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I am re archiving some of the sections as they are old discussions. If someone whats to revisit one of the topics, then they can start a new one at the bottom. But I do find Nydas reverting of the archives to be borderline disruptive and if he continues, should be taken to WP:ANI. --Farix (Talk) 15:39, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Address the points raised, rather than claiming my edits are disruptive. They are in line with the consensus. Tony Sidaway has not indicated that he has retreated from his unprecendented belief in talk-page blanking, nor has any substantial reason for the highly unusual archiving procedures been offered.--Nydas^(Talk) 15:48, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Archiving old discussions isn't something that needs to be discussed. I don't see any valid reasons why you are objecting to archive those old discussions other then as sense of WP:OWNership. --Farix (Talk) 15:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You can see the objections above, mostly not from me. As for ownership, Tony indicated that his presence here necessitated the use of highly unusual archiving procedures. Do you support his 'blank talk page after ten days' wikiphilosophy?--Nydas^(Talk) 16:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The only objections I see above are from you, and they can be summed up in that you don't want the discussions to be archived. --Farix (Talk) 16:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You might want to read the objections again -- they are in response to Tony's want to blank ALL inactive discussion, not trim down big pages. In fact, this page wasn't being archived at all (it was HUGE) until I first mentioned it. What Tony did overnight was fine, the page is still quite large. You're reverting it for no seeming reason that I can see. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 16:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

What about the posts made by Parsifal, Girolama, Melodia and Milo?--Nydas^(Talk) 16:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh... my god. You guys are bloody ridiculous. I know! If the page gets too long we should all just stop discussing things! Then it'll be kept short! My god. You're warring over how long a talk page should be. Go outside and do something productive for a change. Kuronue 19:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You guys are bloody ridiculous. Ummm.... what's that mean? If you don't like reading this archive debate, you are welcome to not read it.

This is not an arbitrary discussion. There was non-consensual removal of 45,000 spoiler notices by a small group of editors. The only reason to shorten this talk page is to obscure discussion of what happened and that there is still no consensus on the spoiler notice issue. There are no other reasons the page needs to be kept to any particular length, as is clear since none of my questions about that above have received even one direct reply.

So, you might feel this is silly, and if you do, stop reading it. But the archiving debate is not about archiving, it's about transparency of the consensus process. That's why it's important. --Parsifal _Hello 19:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I recognize this, parsifal, and I see what you're getting at, but it's ridiculous to get this wound up over the number of kilobytes a talk page has grown to. If you want to make claims that someone is trying to hide something, make them, don't go on and on about 100kb this and 8 days that. Kuronue 23:29, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right, and several people have already made that statement, though it's not "something" being hidden, it's the whole process. I'm not going to go into that right here because it's a big topic, and it's all through this page and the archives. As far as getting wound up over the number of kilobytes a talk page has grown to... that's my whole point... I don't care at all about the number of days or KB. That was my reply to someone else, who had written that it should be kept to a certain number or days or a certain size. I showed those numbers as examples that the long talk page is not a real problem, it's a red herring. Let the page be long, so what? By setting the archiving bot to an arbitrary number of days or page size, a topic that could be of interest to a new reader would disappear; and there's no reason that needs to happen. --Parsifal _Hello 01:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

This is silly. Unfortunately, me not reading it will not make you realize how silly this is. A word of advice: There is no cabal. Archiving a talk page is not about facilitating a vast conspiracy. And it's also sad that even though every venue you've brought the 45K thing to... they've all declined. End of the line. So give it a rest, please? David Fuchs ^(talk) 19:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You have me confused with someone else. I've never brought this to any other venue, that was not me. I have never said anything about a cabal. I've not mentioned a vast conspiracy. All I said is that a few editors made some big changes without consensus. That's not a cabal or a conspiracy, it's just a few editors, and it appears to be what happened, which seems strange to me. --Parsifal _Hello 21:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to whoever recently set the archiving period to a sane value which I had already suggested two weeks ago. [3] It seems to have taken this time. --Tony Sidaway 13:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

A few days ago I felt the need to refer to a few weeks old thread that had already been archived. This suggests to me that archiving here is too aggressive and possibly led to unecessarily repetitive discussion.
As of 8/17 Mizabot has independently programmed a new parameter "minthreadsleft", that I suggested above on 7/31 as "minimum number of discussion topics". I've installed and set that to 20, hoping to approximately fill the screen with the topics table of contents. After 20 topics appear, the bot will archive unedited topics every 10 days (unchanged by me) which allows once-a-week editors to have their say without being pressed. There is still no way to set maximum talk page size size, but based on discussion here, as well as my tests over months at another large talk page, that seems mostly an issue for editors on dialup. At the other large talk page I noticed that slow dialup loading (about 25 kbs) was feeling annoyingly draggy around a 500K page size, but there were no other technical problems. Milo 08:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

If we preserved the last 20 discussions on each talk page, the page would currently contain all of its current contents (148kb) plus nearly all of archive8 (167kb). At a rough estimate, something approaching 300kb. I have set it to 4. Preserving the latest four active threads of discussion seems reasonable to me. --Tony Sidaway 11:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

4 is totally unreasonable, considering how much things are brought up over and over on this page already. I set it to 10, though I'm wondering if the bot's working at all -- check out 'comment by Wedineinheck', already 12 days old, so it should have been archived yesterday morning I believe...but it wasn't. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 12:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

10 is okay. The bot didn't archive the discussion you mention because there are only 10 discussions on the page and Milo had set minthreadsleft to 20. At about 150kb this page is just about bearable, though something under 100kb would be more acceptable. Milo's numbers seem especially odd--25kbs on a dial-up? Really? v90 maximum is 56 kiloBITS per second. --Tony Sidaway 12:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I think a 300 kilobyte page is a reasonable maximum on fast-enough dialup, like 47 kbs.

To the best of my knowledge, the full 56 kbs has never been allowed in the USA. IIRC, the FCC limits v90/v92 use to something like 53 kbs, due to concerns about crosstalk degrading the signal-to-noise ratio of adjacent pairs.

There are so many different local telephone office equipment and wiring arrangements that it's usually difficult to explain modem speed good or bad luck. However, I think one can only expect to get 53 kbs if one lives perhaps within a copper-wire block of a central office or the nearest line concentrator substation, or one has a copper-to-fiber interface box at one's property line, or one has digital telephone service from a cable company.

Beyond that limit, in most cities there is a problem called bridge tap.

The communications effect of bridge tap is to slow the kilobits per second rate between one's computer and the ISP. (A related but much worse speed degradation can be caused by loading coils in rural phone lines more than a mile long.) If your neighborhood is served by copper pair cables, they may have unterminated side branches leading to other neighborhoods. Unfortunately, all of those side branches act like electronic capacitors placed in parallel with the v90 modem signal, which sounds like audio white noise. Acting as an audio filter capacitors conduct and reduce the amplitude of higher audio frequencies in the modem signal. Higher audio frequencies are where the fastest/broadest bit information is modulated. For exaggerated demonstration, the audio effect is like tuning an old FM radio between stations, and listening to the white noise change to pink noise as one turns the tone control from treble to bass. The actual "pinking" effect of bridge tap on the modem signal may be too subtle to hear. Milo 04:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Trouble editing a 44Kb section having multi-subthreads

#"A compromise" is 44Kb of a 162Kb page. I'm not having any problem with loading speed, just a repeated problem with trying to find and add posts to the correct sub-thread within it. Milo 23:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Too few discussion sections

Tony kept archiving discussion sections through the October 2007 holiday period when there was a lull in the discussion. More of these lulls may occur now through the New Year's holiday. Indeed, the whole topic may take a slower pace.

Since Tony had agreed that "10 is okay" (Tony 12:38 22 August 2007, #"arbitrary section break" above), I kept thinking he would stop archiving, but he didn't. This reduced the number of discussions to four. Therefore I reverted the last three, which was convenient to do for now. I think Tony (and Mizabot) should stop archiving until there are 11 discussions with at least one 10-day-old discussion to archive down to 10.

10 days uncommented to archive, with 10 minimum discussions remaining of any uncommented age, seems like a formula easy to remember that is converging toward consensus. Milo 02:23, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

What October 2007 holiday?

I don't think we should have a minimum number of sections. If a section has been inactive for ten days, then there's no reason to force editors to download it every time they look at the discussion page to catch up with current discussions. We already have the page history and, for those who prefer them, the archive pages. --Tony Sidaway 21:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

"What October 2007 holiday?" Wikipedia says that Halloween Trick-or-treating and guising is observed in England. Additionally in the USA, it has become Candy Manufacturers Subsidy and Pre-Halloween Christmas Greed sales week. Though scantily mentioned in Halloween costume, there is evidence that it is evolving into a USA Sex Promotion holiday.

"I don't think we should have a minimum number of sections." Again pushing talk page blanking by default?

If one is trying to influence as many talk page discussions are you are, I can see why that overhead, small to most editors, might an annoying reminder of limits to your power.

But you would trade your small per-download-time convenience, for the inconvenience of most editors in having to do additional archive/history page loads and talk page returns, just to find out what had been previously discussed to a lull only 10 days ago. Since they don't have to do this on any other talk page, visiting editors would not casually check archives here. That would result in even tighter circles of repetitious discussion.

You still have no consensus for this extreme proposal. Milo 23:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Right now the page is 32kb. The project page itself is 35. Talk:Gregorian_calendar is 82; Gregorian_calendar itself is 138. Archiving is not, at present, an issue. (I picked Gregorian Calendar because it was the page I have open in my other tab. it has two images and a handful of tables). I just figured I'd put some real numbers out there for posterity's sake. Kuronue | Talk 06:30, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

What other pages do is irrelevant, remember the principle of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (yes I know this isn't a deletion debate) whenever the "This page is xx kilobytes long" warning appears, this is a sign that a page has gone over the desireable 32Kb limit. You have to remember that the page may be viewed on other devices such as mobile phones, consoles, PDAs, text readers which may not have the memory to cope with larger pages. I see no problem with the archiving which was proposed by people such as Tony. if people aren't aware of archiving they should read WP:ARCHIVE. John Hayes^talk 16:04, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

So you're in favor of Tony's talk page blanking proposal? (100% archiving after 10 days with no comments.) Milo 18:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

No, I am favour of his archiving, there is a distinct difference between blanking (which deletes the information) and archiving (which keeps it in a location which can be easily accessed but avoids clogging up the page). What he has done is is pretty standard archiving procedure, for such a page; it is what I have encountered on the majority of larger article talk pages which I have spent any lengths of time on, though normally it would be done manually rather than by a bot. I probably would have made it 2 weeks, but if a comment hasn't been replied to within 10 days, on a talk page with such a large volume of traffic, then the chances are it won't be replied to, and therefore can be archived. John Hayes^talk 20:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let's try again. Are you in favor of Tony's proposal of 100% archiving after 10 days with no comments? Milo 23:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

As explained above, Yes. John Hayes^talk 00:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, archiving policy

I am once again forced to cease discussion on this page until a sane archiving policy is restored. It is unacceptable to force readers of this page to download tens of kilobytes of stale discussion just to keep up to date. --Tony Sidaway 03:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Tony and have once again archived those threads. Marc Shepherd 04:12, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

One of the threads you archived included a comment dated November 2. In what way is that stale? The other discussions are only a couple weeks old, also relatively recent for many users who only edit on weekends.

This talk page used to be close to 500KB, as are many talk pages. In what way is 115KB disruptive to a modern browser's ability to download the text? That's less than a one second download for most users. --Parsifal _Hello 04:17, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Marc Shepherd (edit summary 04:11, 4 Nov 2007) wrote: "Archiving old discussion per standard archiving practice" Not so. Aside from the spurious claim of "standard" of which there is none, the last apparently consensed formula at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler/Archiving debate was: archive uncommented discussions after 10 days UNLESS only 10 discussions remain. .

• Specifically, I (Milo 08:45, 22 Aug 2007) installed and set minthreadsleft to 20.

• Tony (11:43) set it to 4.

• Melodia (12:08) objected to 4 ("totally unreasonable"), and set minthreadsleft to 10.

• Tony (12:38) wrote, "10 is okay."

• Milo consensed this compromise with silence.

(Note: Mizabot's "minthreadsleft" = discussion sections remaining)

Obviously, Tony has recanted consensing to 10 minthreadsleft without previously revealing this change.

• Tony constructively consenses back to 4 minthreadsleft.

• Marc constructively consenses to 4 minthreadsleft.

• Milo still consenses 10 minthreadsleft.

• Parsifal constructively consenses to 10 minthreadsleft.

• Melodia consenses to 10 minthreadsleft, reasonably assuming she hasn't changed her mind.

• Analytically polled, that's currently 3 to 2 editors preferring 10 over 4 minthreadsleft.

Related, Nydas, Parsifal, Wilkinson, and Girolama had previously objected to excessive archiving and/or specifically to Tony's extreme proposal of talk page blanking (100% archiving after 10 days with no comments).

Also, I previously renewed the suspicion that the underlying purpose of this uniquely excessive talk page archiving is a further attempt to politically suppress discussion — this time by making it appear that a monumentally, perhaps historically large spoiler guide consensus debate of over 1,850,000 bytes, 4,000-some posts, and ~6 months duration (just this page since 5 May 2007), amounts to only four discussion sections.

This suggests to me that Tony knows he's already lost the debate on principle, and that the only way left to avoid practical compromise is to again abuse a consensus process. Milo 06:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Nope, I haven't changed my mind. If the bot would do its job, this wouldn't be an issue. I don't see 115 as long either, and lots of talk pages are far longer (not to mention, stuff like village pump, etc). Especially if there WERE comments from the other day....so why isn't the bot doing its job? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 11:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

"why isn't the bot doing its job?"

"23:16, 28 August 2007 Tony Sidaway (Removing minthreadleft temporarily as an experiment (should not cause unnecessary archiving at present). Seems to be suppressing *all* archiving at present.)"(diff)

For the record, I also noticed the tapdancing done with the archiving debate by attempting to shift it to another discussion that nobody followed it to, and then asserting his own will again, and I am also in favour of less archiving, rather than more. I've had threads I've thought about following up on archived. If less archiving and a longer talk page causes certain people to leave the discussion, well, I'm forced to wonder whether that's really a bug or in fact a feature. Wandering Ghost 12:39, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Obviously we've won the debate, hands down. I don't agree with these attempts to keep the talk page at an unnecessarily large size. We have clearly marked archives, and moreover I don't think the good of Wikipedia is served by the above blatant personal attacks. --Tony Sidaway 02:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

"Obviously we've won the debate, hands down." Applying the duck test, you aren't acting like a hands-down debate winner. Judging from your telegraphed fatigue, irritation, and clutching at straws, if you really believed that you had won that clearly, you would have shrugged and departed this page long ago. If you really believed that, you wouldn't be putting up an escalating struggle to gain an advantage by excessive archiving, whether it's the small gain in downloading time that you claim, or the debate suppression that I suspect, or both. If you really believed that, you just wouldn't care what pro-taggers said here.

What you've won so far is held only by majoritarian force, an illegitimate principle at Wikipedia. If majoritarianism were approved policy, then I would comply. But it isn't, so you are engaged in unprincipled behavior. That, documented process abuses, and perhaps without thinking, buying into Phil's unconsensed schema to drive away a large and younger class of readers and editors, is why you and the rest of the clique have decisively lost the debate on principle. Will you be able to fool some of the editors all of the time, using the consensus-illusion of majoritarian force? Yes, for an estimated 6 to 18 more months.

"blatant personal attacks" I don't see any, but if there are, it's poetic payback. I was "blatantly" personally attacked after you set a borderline bad example for Marc. Of course, being a newb, he didn't understand that you were artfully walking the line, so he jumped in with a full frontal PA against me and Nydas. Then when I was in the process of enforcing the moribund personal attack rules, you stopped me by archiving my documentation of Marc's failure to comply. So because of you, it's PA open season on editors here. So much for the good of Wikipedia.

Quit complaining — because even if you reconsider whether "the good of Wikipedia" includes enabling PA's to compensate your diminished sense of entitlement to prevail in philosophy debates, I'm the first victim in line for PA enforcement justice. Milo 10:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Restored Milo's comment above (Tony deleted it).--Nydas^(Talk) 16:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-restored the two above comments, this time deleted by Marc.--Nydas^(Talk) 16:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Why is this being argued? If people want so badly to take a stand against unreasonable retention of comments made a whopping 2 days ago on the page, let them walk. Maybe then we can work on the actual guideline instead of doing the "OMG SPOILER BAD" "NO WAI SPOILER GOOD!" "OMG ARCHVING!!!" dance. Kuronue | Talk 00:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

This page is not that long. This really does come across as a way of giving up practically without giving up verbally -- which is their choice. Let them. Peace might ensue. You never know. Doczilla 05:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)