User:ClueBot III/Documentation

< User:ClueBot III

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Quick-Start

If you want to take default options and just get archives up and running on your page, you can use {{subst:User:ClueBot III/JustArchiveThis}}. Just place this at the top of the talk page you want archived:

{{subst:User:ClueBot III/JustArchiveThis}}

If you want to configure it more, read on for how to use the full ArchiveThis template.

How your page is archived

ClueBot III can be used to automatically archive sections/threads from a given page. Usually the page you are archiving from will be a talk page. Your archive pages can be organized by date, or numbered. Combinations of dates and numbering are also possible. This is configured by the arguments used for the format and archiveprefix parameters. Please see the parameter descriptions and examples for a few of the many ways to do this.

How does ClueBot III know when to archive my page?

ClueBot III works based on the revision history of the page in question, and not on the timestamps associated with signatures. This means that the practice of manually adding a timestamp way in the future will not work to prevent ClueBot III from archiving a thread. Furthermore, on one archival sweep, ClueBot III will select an archive target and will archive all eligible threads to that archive. This means that when you initially set up ClueBot III, if you have untidy archives then, it will sweep all of the old conversations into whatever archive it deems to be the current one. It also means that pages with massively long discussion threads will have the entire thread archived into the current archive, which can cause slight overstuffing of size-based archives.

Keeping linked

Once a series of threads is archived, ClueBot III looks for all pages that could have been linked to the moved parts, and updates the links that need to be fixed. When a page is linked to a huge number of others pages, the process takes a lot of time. In any case, this is the reason of collapse described at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive_202#Conspiracy Unveiled. Said more clearly: don't use ClueBot III on a page where the what links here are large.

Index generation

In addition to archiving your page, ClueBot III can also generate an index of all your archive pages. Assuming that you are archiving the page Talk:YourPage, the archive index generated by ClueBot III is located at:
User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/Talk:YourPage
You can make use of this either directly or by transcluding it onto your Talk:YourPage/Archive index page. One way to use this directly would be to include it as the archive index page in your archive box. For example:
{{Archives |auto= short |index= User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/{{FULLPAGENAME}} |search= yes |bot= ClueBot III |age= 90}}
will produce an archive box with an appropriate link to your index.

If you want to use this index with the {{talk header}} template you will need to transclude it onto your Talk:YourPage/Archive index page. To do so you would put the text:
{{User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/{{NAMESPACE}}:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}
on your Talk:YourPage/Archive index page.

General template format

The general format for the archive template:

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis
|archiveprefix=
|format=
|age=
}}

Required parameters

age
Type: unsigned integer
Default: 0
Description: This parameter must be set to the number of hours a thread can go without a reply before it should be archived. If you do not set it all threads will qualify to be archived.

archiveprefix
Type: string
Description: This parameter must be set to a fully qualified page name under the page you wish to archive. For example, if User talk:Cobi was being archived using dated archives, then archiveprefix=User talk:Cobi/Archives/ would be appropriate. For the same page being archived with numbered archives, archiveprefix=User talk:Cobi/Archive would be appropriate. Not setting this parameter correctly can have some strange results. The {{FULLPAGENAME}} variable can not actually be passed to ClueBot III. The fully qualified page name must be hard coded. The easiest way to do this is to use immediate substitution such as:
For archives organized by date enter:
|archiveprefix={{subst:FULLPAGENAME}}/Archives/
For numbered archives enter (note /Archive instead of /Archives/):
|archiveprefix={{subst:FULLPAGENAME}}/Archive

Warning: system variables such as {{SUBST:FULLPAGENAME}} are replaced by the page name to be archive when the system variable is saved to a page to be archived. However some punctuation characters that can appear in a page name ("&') are replaced by HTML character codes that are not recognised by the bot (see mediawikiwiki:Manual:PAGENAMEE encoding for details about these and other characters). For example ' is replaced with ' (so if the bot is to work then ' must be replaced '.

format
Type: string
Default: ""
Description: This parameter must be set to a valid argument to PHP's date() function. You may also include an %%i value. %%i is for numbered archives instead of dated archives, and is replaced with the archive number. Once variable substitution has occurred it will be concatenated onto the end of the value of archiveprefix. The result of the concatenation will be the the name of the archive page(s). See examples. Most commonly, for archives organized by date use:
|format=Y/F. This gives "Archives/2016/January". In order to obtain "Archives/2016/01 (January)", use |format=Y/m (F).
For numbered archives use:
|format= %%i
Note for date-based archives: Cluebot III stores files into a single archive page each time it runs. With date-based archives, the page name is whatever archiveprefix concatenated with format is for the date that is NOW-age (where age is in hours). For example, if you are starting up YYYY/Month archiving from scratch with many old threads in the page being archived, ClueBot II will put all of the threads into a single file, not multiple files. If you want a single archiving run to be split into multiple files based on the last date in each thread you will need to use lowercase sigmabot III.

Optional parameters

These parameters are shaping the behavior of the archiver.

archivenow
Type: comma delimited array of strings
Default: ""
Description: This optional parameter should contain a comma separated list of strings for which ClueBot III will search within the threads on the page. If any of these strings are found in a thread, the bot will archive the thread immediately. The bot will also convert {{templates}} in this list to {{tl|escaped templates}} upon archival. This could be useful for pages where {{resolved}} or such is used. The {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} blank template is available for this use. However, it has no special properties. It is only just another string that happens to be a template for which ClueBot III can be told to search. In addition to the following typical usage, an example of its use is shown below.
Typical usage: |archivenow=<nowiki>{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}</nowiki>

header
Type: string
Default: "{{Talkarchive}}"
Description: When creating a new archive page, the bot will put this at the top of the new page.

headerlevel
Type: unsigned integer, between 1 and 7 inclusive
Default: 2
Description: This is the header level for the threads the bot will archive. Anything on the page before the first header of this level will not be archived. A level 1 header is = Header =, a default thread (level 2) header is == Header ==, and the highest level header is a level 7: ======= Header =======.

key
Type: string
Default: ""
Description: The value of this parameter must match an internally generated key in order for the archives to be stored anywhere other than as subpages of the page being archived.

maxarchsize
Type: unsigned integer, greater than 10000
Default: 0
Description: The target maximum size of the archive in bytes before %%i (see format) is incremented. If 0, this is disabled. In general, this parameter is used for numbered archives, but not for archives organized by date. This is not a hard limit. Resulting archive page sizes will almost always exceed this number, perhaps by a great amount. Each time ClueBot III runs on a page it archives all threads that are old enough to qualify for archiving into a single file. If you have maxarchsize=100000 with a current archive file size of 90k and it ends up that there are 60 threads to archive with a total size of 250k, then the current archive will be extended to 340k despite of the 100k limit.

maxkeepbytes
Type: unsigned integer
Default: 0
Description: If greater than 0, this is the maximum number of thread content bytes to keep on the talk page. Older threads are forcibly archived if there are more than this number of thread content bytes on the page. If 0, this option is disabled.

maxkeepthreads
Type: unsigned integer
Default: 0
Description: If greater than 0, this is the maximum number of threads to keep on the talk page. Older threads are forcibly archived if there are more than this number of threads on the page. If 0, this option is disabled.

minarchthreads
Type: unsigned integer
Default: 0
Description: The bot will not archive unless this many or more sections need archival.

minkeepthreads
Type: unsigned integer
Default: 0
Description: The bot will not archive if there will be this many or less sections left on the page.

nogenerateindex
Type: unsigned integer (boolean)
Default: 0
Description: If this is set to 1, the bot will not generate an index under User:ClueBot III/Indices/. There are very few times this option should be used. If this option is used, the index option will no longer work right.

numberstart
Type: unsigned integer
Default: 1
Description: Default value for %%i in format.

transformheader Warning! An invalid option here can screw up your archives!
Type: string, search===replace pairs delimited by &&&
Default: ""
Description: Convert archived thread headers. For each pair, search must be a valid regular expression and replace is a replacement string. See this for more information, search corresponds to $pattern, replace corresponds to $replacement, and the thread header corresponds to $subject. If you do not understand what this does, don't try to use it. Instead, ask for help from Cobi.

Cosmetic parameters

These parameters are shaping the archive box displayed on the page where archiving is active.