Template:Automatic archive navigator is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should be proposed here first. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use ((edit template-protected)) to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories. Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Automatic archive navigator template.

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Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 120 days

This template was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination: No consensus, 2020 August 24, see discussion. Redirect, 2020 August 6, see discussion. Keep, 2015 August 24, see discussion. Merge, 2013 November 12, see discussion.

Hello,

1. The third and fifth examples shown here do not render any changes to the output.
2. The third one uses the style= parameter.
3. The fifth one is supposed to blank the left image (image=none) and add an image on the right (imageright=).
4. These are the examples that are linked from the template's "article" page.

Please fix or advise. PS: please refactor my question if it is rubbish. Thank you for keeping up the template department. Cheers! ((u|WikiWikiWayne)) {Talk} 00:52, 23 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Did this edit break Ash's ((Automatic archive navigator/Exam)) template by linking to a sandbox? Cheers! ((u|WikiWikiWayne)) {Talk} 01:52, 23 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This appears to be a documentation issue. ((Automatic archive navigator/Exam)) isn't actually used anywhere other than for examples that have broken sometime in the past 14 years. I've removed the link for now, but the documentation should probably be improved with some actually examples, but that's a bit annoying for this template since it relies on other archive subpages existing. . --Trialpears (talk) 12:49, 23 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The "Do not edit the contents of this page." warning in the blurb seems overly strict, because when manually archiving Talk page sections, that's exactly what people may have to do. The intent probably was to discourage messing with existing already-archived discussions any further, but the phrasing used here is overly broad and technically would seem to prohibit necessary activity for manual archiving too. Perhaps something like this might be better: Please do not edit any already-archived content on this page. (This is not intended to prohibit manual archiving of additional content, including on this page if appropriate.) That's not very succinct though. Perhaps someone else can improve upon it. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 04:46, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Would be good if this also auto-detected archives that are named for years, e.g. all those at Talk:The Walt Disney Company.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:19, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

((Archive)) is being merged here now and has two parameters that this template doesn't hav, |diff= (~73 uses in this very unreliable search) and |histOffset= (~68 uses). These add a link to the original revision of the page and the appropriate part of the history respecivly. I could easily add these and carry them over without any issue, but I find these links completly useless. I want to keep unnecessary complexity at a minimum to keep the template easy to use and removing this in my view useless feature used by under 0.1% of transclusions seems reasonable. Pings to TfD participants and the 4 people who use this feature on their user talk pages and have edited in the past month. @SMcCandlish, Gonnym, Caeciliusinhorto, Anomie, RayneVanDunem, Nsgaeverine, and Anon126: --Trialpears (talk) 02:02, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You can add a tracking category to find usages if the search isn't good enough. Regarding your question if the parameters are that underused, then either editors don't know about them and might be useful or they just aren't useful. If they aren't useful there is no reason to carry them over. Gonnym (talk) 07:46, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm in favor of omitting them. They are not useful, for at least two reasons. No one needs to see the talk page in the exact state it was when the archive page was created, since that just shows the same threads, just in their original context (it provides no additional information). And archive pages are usually added-to over time until they get so long that a second (third, etc.) archive page is later created, so the two "snapshotting" parameters are not going to relate to the archive page's contents for very long in most cases and will just end up being confusing to anyone who tries to use them. In the weird case that someone does feel a need to look at the original talk page in the state it was in when the archive page was created (e.g. because the archive page was created by someone who later turned out to be a subtle vandal), this is what the page history feature of the website is for. Look at the dates and times of the archived discussions, and go back in the orignal talk page history to whatever date and time is of interest to you.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:20, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have no objection to removing these parameters, as one of the (apparently very few) people who use them. I think they provide some convenience but I recognize that this may not be worth the added complexity. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 08:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]