Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-1732320-20160627020859/@comment-732150-20160628043815

SuperSajuuk wrote: I didn't scroll through the whole discussion to see that it was active, which I admitted was a mistake at the time. Also, who cares if the archives are small? If we use your logic that "several small archives are pointless", then there's no issue with me going through many archives and combining them into larger archives (which really isn't as big of a problem as you are trying to make it that it is). Depending on how big those archive mergers are, yes, there is. If an archive is too big, it's no more useful than if no archive was ever made. Your current way of arching is essentially form over function. Smaller archives defeat the purpose of clearing out big talk pages.

For example, if we simply archived stuff as soon as it became old, no matter the size, Asura's talk page would have a lot more than three archives No it wouldn't. Don't make up things that aren't going to happen. Missing my point. What I mean is if Asura's talk page had been archived the way you're currently arching pages from when it was first created, it would have been fragmented into several smaller archives, as a lot of time passed between the topics early on, instead of letting it grow to a proper size.

Not archiving smaller talk pages also means questions like that are less likely to be asked, as the answer will be right there at the talk page instead of archived. Hardly likely to happen, I've archived numerous talkpages that are essentially dead. In fact, 90% of the wiki's talkpages are dead, because they're all for extremely "old" content that nobody needs to discuss or improve upon, because there's generally nothing to improve on a large number of articles. So what if it's unlikely? Doing nothing takes care of a potential, if unlikely problem, whereas actually doing something means it will always potentially be a problem, no matter how unlikely.

The fact is, talk pages are still the place to go for having discussions about stuff that affects article content. Having smaller stuff, even if old, readily available in the talk page right then and there when checking makes it easier to discover relevant discussions instead of digging through archives, the likelihood of them being required is besides the point. No, you missed the point I was making. The fact is, talkpages are hardly ever used these days. Sure a few discussions got made today, but I can recall days or weeks where a talkpage is not used (excluding user talkpages). Why does it matter if talkpages are archived that are clearly for dead discussion topics? Refer to "form over function" and "potentially of problem" points.

TheUltimate3 wrote: Omnibender wrote: Sajuuk, there's no such thing as an archiving policy. Archiving is only mentioned in the talk page policy, mentioning old and big, both of which you sometimes ignore. /Casually rests Banhammer down at foot of chair.

I think this right here ends everything now does it. There is no policy archiving policy. Unless there is a reason better than "Likelihood that this person isn't coming back", than it shall stand that Archiving user talkpages/user pages rests at the discretion of that user. While I agree with user talk pages, that still doesn't cover how article talk pages should be archived. I've mentioned archiving old and big, but the way the talkpage policy currently is, it can sort of be interpreted as an "either or" case with big and old, when I think it should in fact be "simultaneously", and that section is specifically in the user talkpage section.