Manual:Pywikibot/archivebot.py/setup

The archivebot.py is a script to archive discussion pages. This document explains how to set up discussion pages on-wiki for the automatic archiving done by this bot. For a documentation on how to operate the bot, please see Manual:Pywikibot/archivebot.py.

How to set up for a discussion page
This bot only processes pages that are explicitly marked by transcluding a marker template, and archives sections inactive for a specified duration. A commonly used marker template is  . The template may have anchor>#parameters|parameters described below. (Most of them are optional.)

For a section to be archived, it must be a level 2 section, marked with. It is possible to opt-out some sections: see the explanation below.

Template parameters
Meanings of the template's parameters are:

Variables for page name patterns
In the   parameter in the template, following variables can be used.

How to prevent archiving
To prevent a section (thread) from being archived for a finite time, you can edit the section and insert a signature with a future timestamp. The bot will not archive the thread until that time. Make sure that the signature is well-formatted; it must include a user name and a date exactly in the same format as a proper signature, otherwise it will not be recognized by the bot.

You can block a thread from being archived effectively indefinitely, using a very distant future timestamp, such as " (UTC)".

To not confuse readers, the dummy signature may be written as a comment only with the dummy user name "DoNotArchiveUntil". Other comments will be ignored by the bot.

You might want to have on your wiki a subst>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Substitution|substitutable template for this particular purpose. See English Wikipedia's template for an example: w:Template:DNAU.