What are best practices for archiving topics? I’ve not used this feature before, and don’t fully understand what happens when you archive something and when we should use it. Appreciate any explanation/links 
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We don’t use archive on our instance (except our staging instance where we like to try and break things), so I can’t really say when to use each as we don’t focus on archive at all in our live site.
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A lot depends on your edit time window and much work your Mods feel like doing.
eg. if you have a very long edit time window, you may want to archive an older discussion so posts don’t get edited into something not desirable.
We’ve found that having a shorter edit time window (many have complained that it’s too short) and auto-closing topics that gone dormant works well.
It’s a subtle distinction but
Close only prevents new replies.
and
Archive freezes a topic in carbonite so nothing about it can ever change. Ever.
Refer to this handy diagram:
The idea is that archived topics would eventually be moved out or deleted. Archiving a topic means it has one foot in the grave.
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My main set of categories are configured with auto-close. I don’t plan to ever archive in those categories.
I have an Admin category for Administrative Announcements. Everyone can read, but only Staff can create and reply. This category is not configured for auto-close, but I archive topics when they are no longer applicable.
Thanks everyone - and esp @codinghorror for the amusing visual. I think I actually understand pretty clearly what happens when you archive a topic, but I am still wrapping my head around why we would use archiving. Looks like we just won’t use it.
I will reflect on auto-closing of topics as well - that’s an interesting thought. Thanks @kensims. One of the issues we are running into is that we go back and close topics that are old, because the discussions have run their course. But that then bumps them up in lists and generates notifications which is unfortunate, and causes some complaints because people think they should be paying attention to them.
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This was fixed… It should only notify the OP and it definitely no longer bumps the topic…
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OP means Original Poster?
That would be good. Thanks for clarifying. What about moderators? Do moderators get notified?
OP = Original Poster
Well they likely closed it… so no they don’t. If they were watching the category/topic, it does appear under the Unread tab (may not be true for auto-close), but nothing in the notifications area.
Ah - so we have a category that we require everyone to watch. When a topic is closed in that category, does everyone get notified?
In the Unread tab, yes, an actual Notification in the top right - no.
Again, may not apply for auto-close, but it seems to apply for a moderator closing a topic (based on the experience I have at Sitepoint and here at Meta)
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Is there a difference in search engine visibility for Archived topics? I for one would like to see archived topics be not-indexed by Google and co., and be invisible or deprioritized in the in-Discourse search. This for many of the reasons stated here, but still leaving the topic around for people who have the link or otherwise know where it is…
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I think that is a very good idea and would be another important point of distinction between closed. @techapj can you add this to your list?
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I’m not sure that “archived = hidden” is a good line to draw. Alternatively, you could do something crazy like automatically submitting archived topics to www.archive.org.
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I always understood an archive to be a place of public record, to be referenced when required. So I assumed the purpose of archiving a topic was to ensure a particularly-important topic remained preserved and unchanged - like locking cells in a spreadsheet to prevent accidental changes.
This sounds more like bundling up old business records, ready to throw them out when they get beyond the seven-year limit (or whatever the local legal requirement is). I’m not sure quite what I’d call that, but it wouldn’t be archiving.
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Yeah, I don’t like that idea either. They can unlist if they want it hidden from Search Engines, why should Archived be removed?
Archived simply means you want to store it in its original state, you don’t want it modified. It would be similar to a static page which are still visible to search engines.
There is already a solution for this, they can unlist it and archive it. Done. Bam. Easy. Archive does not equal invisible.
With the change proposed, it is impossible for me to save a discussion in its current state without making it invisible/impossible to find. That’s frustrating.
Definition of archive:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/archive
Keywords: “Long term storage”
What if all of the important documents from our history were archived in the way you’ve outlined? They would be nearly impossible to find by new users because they don’t have a link to it. Hardly the best use of long term storage, yes?
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So it seems we do actually have a few archived topics (over 20 pages worth). So the impact on us is real (just an FYI).
Yes that is an even better idea. @techapj make it so unlisting a topic removes it from Google search results by adding the no index header.
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Esta publicación ha sido actualizada y republicada aquí:
Publicación original a continuación
Estaba tratando de entender qué hace «archivar» un tema en comparación con «cerrarlo». Revisé el código y tomé algunas notas, las cuales pensé que valía la pena compartir.
Solo quiero señalar y reiterar que la publicación de @codinghorror aquí realmente muestra de manera muy clara esta funcionalidad:
Entonces, ¿cómo se comparan «archivar» y «cerrar» un tema?
Común a ambos
- Muestra un icono de «candado» junto al tema en las listas.
- Es posible que aparezcan dos iconos de candado si el tema está tanto cerrado como archivado: Close and Archive a Topic
- Deshabilita la respuesta al tema.
- Deshabilita la votación.
- Deshabilita el botón «Invitar» al final del tema.
- Cerrar o archivar un tema no actualiza su fecha de última actividad.
Específico de los temas archivados
- Deshabilita la capacidad de los usuarios para eliminar una publicación.
- Deshabilita los «me gusta».
Deshabilita la visualización en la página «todas las categorías» «recientes» (usualmente la página de inicio para usuarios registrados).- Deshabilita la visualización del tema en la página
/top. - Deshabilita su inclusión en correos electrónicos de resumen.
- Deshabilita la visualización del tema en la lista de temas «aleatorios» en el pie de página de la página del tema.
- Continúa permitiendo la señalización (flagging) del tema o de las publicaciones.
- Continúa permitiendo los marcadores.
- Sigue apareciendo en la lista
Sin leer(es decir, ves la publicación marcándola como archivada; esto es intencional).
¿A dónde van?
- Puedes ver los temas archivados mediante el parámetro de consulta
status=archived: Discourse Meta - Todavía puedes ver los temas archivados al navegar a una categoría específica.
El futuro
También noté este comentario, que indica que lo que significa finalmente «archivar» podría cambiar:
Hay más discusión en este tema:
How should category archiving work?
Si encuentras un error o algo ha cambiado, por favor responde a esta publicación; la actualizaré.
Quizás esto podría ser el inicio de una publicación de especificación para temas archivados.
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My 2 cents for added features:
- archived topics should also behave like unlisted topics
- should be excluded from search by default
- should not be crawled by bots.
- should remain available to search with a special search operator (include:archived or something?)
- should remain available to those with a link
In other words, they should be put in a state where they are out of the way enough you don’t have to delete them.
(or should those be just features of ‘unlisted’ and a shortcut could exist to “archive and unlist”?)
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