User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox

Archiving user talk pages

When a user's talk page get too long, it can be archived as a subpage of the user's talk page. The standard naming of such a subpage includes the user's name followed by /Archive n, where n is a number. For example, archives for a user named John Doe are titled as [[User talk:John Doe/Archive 1]] , [[User talk:John Doe/Archive 2]], etc.

Creating your first archive subpage

To create your first such subpage:

1. Enter [[User talk:John Doe/Archive 1]] in the search box found in the left hand vertical column of all Citizendium pages. Then click on the "Go" button rather than the "Search" button. (Of course, replace John Doe with your user name).
2. That will take you to a page that has these two sentences (near the top): There is no page titled "John Doe". You can create this page.
3. create this page is a clickable link. Click on it and that will take you to the blank edit page of the subpage your creating.
4. Enter this at the top of blank edit page: {{Archive box|auto=long}}. Scroll down to the bottom of the edit page, enter Creating an archive page in the "Summary" box and then click the "Show preview" button.
5. The preview of the blank edit page should now include this archive box on the upper right hand side (with your user name replacing John Doe):
   
   

6. Scroll back down to the bottom of the edit section and click the "Save page" button. You have now created your archive page 1.

Notes:
(a) In step 1 above, it is important to use the "Go" button rather then the "Search" button.
(b) In step 4 above, it is important that {{Archive box|auto=long}} be entered at the top of the blank edit page. Do not enter the {{subpages}} template anywhere on the blank edit page.

Transferring your talk page content to the archive subpage

There are two possibilities to archive content:

• Some Citizens use to move sections from their talk page to the archive by cut-and-paste.
  In order to do so, you first have to create a new archive page:

For example, search for User talk:A. Citizen/Archive 1 (using the "Go" button rather than the "Search" button) and then choose "create page" (or follow a red link to this page).

Then use your operating system to transfer selected talk page content from its edit window to the new page.

• This method has the advantage that you can select which parts of your current talk page you want to archive and which parts you want to keep.

• Other Citizens prefer to move the talk page to the archive page.
  In order to do so:

Click the "move"-button on top of the page, add (in "To new title") (e.g.) "/Archive 1" to the name of the page, and hit "Move page".

Then replace the resulting redirect by the {{Archive box}} template and other top page material.

This method has two advantages:

• The page history reflects the development of the archived content.
• The listings of user contributions still point to the page that actually shows the edit.

If you want to keep selected parts of the talk page this has to be done by copy/cut-and-paste.