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In this edit, User:Scsbot archived Help desk discussions such as § Multiple PD notice template, updated as recently as 19:09 8 January. I would have wished to respond to User:Scope creep's recent message (diff), but was prevented from doing so because it disappeared a mere 2 1/2 hours after it was written. Can you explain? Aren't bots supposed to base archiving decisions based on timestamp of the most recent comment in the discussion? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also User talk:Scsbot § Hasty archiving.  --Lambiam 17:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also WT:Help desk#Proposal to change archiving at Help Desk to stale + <interval>. Mathglot (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: A bot, like any computer program, is supposed to do what it's designed to do. Some Wikipedia archiving bots, it's true, are designed to look for recent activity, but scsbot was never intended to work that way, because when it was designed (back in 2007 or so) to archive the reference desks, a fixed archiving interval was what was desired.

scsbot won't be rewritten to behave differently, partly because it would be too much work, but more importantly because there's no reason to: there are other bots that are designed to look for recent activity. Starting a discussion to consider switching a desk to a different archiving bot and strategy (as you've done) is the right thing to do. —scs (talk) 04:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Understood, thanks. We'll continue pursuing that, and see what develops. Thanks for weighing in! Mathglot (talk) 06:29, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The archiving function at WP:RD/MA seems to have fallen behind. New date headers are being added, but old topics are there, the oldest one being 12 days old. I thought one week was the time limit, so has there been a change? RDBury (talk) 23:24, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@RDBury: Yes, there has been a change. See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Suggestion for Time Increase. —scs (talk) 01:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That explains it, thanks. I think 14 days will work better, at least for WP:RD/MA. Sometimes during the holiday season or over the summer there are no active questions and the pages are left empty, and I assume it's a bit discouraging to a potential poster to see a blank page. RDBury (talk) 03:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was recommended to seek your input on this: Wikipedia:Help_desk#Help_desk_archiving. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:16, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Answered in the thread. —scs (talk) 20:26, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you understand what happened here: Special:Diff/1239549457?  --Lambiam 10:19, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: It's basically, "It does that sometimes". The basic algorithm for inserting the new August 10 header is simply to find the last question dated August 9, and insert "= August 10 =" right after it.

So the next question is, why was there already August 9 header after the August 9 question? I suspect that question was actually posted on August 8, after which the bot (during the previous day's run) added the August 9 header after it, after which someone added the "Preceding unsigned comment" comment to the question, with an August 9 date baked into it.

The bot used to insert date headers out of order all the time. Eventually I put in a fix for the most common case (namely an empty day), but I think the bot still gets confused in the case where a "Preceding unsigned comment" comment got added to an unsigned question a day later than the question actually appeared.

Or, at least, that's what I assume happens — I'm not sure I've ever dug all the way down to the bottom of this issue. —scs (talk) 14:13, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The August 9 question was added on August 9 above the already existing August 9 header: Special:Diff/1239515506. The edit summary shows that the poster added their question by editing the section of the preceding question.  --Lambiam 19:09, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]