Wikipedia talk:Refactoring/Refactoring of archives

Should archives (including but not limited to archives of requests for adminship, requests for comment, arbitration cases, and talk pages) be refactored, reworked, or summarized? Should they be left untouched forever once they're archived?

Yes

Clear summaries help a reader who might not want to dig through thousands of kilobytes of text to find the main points of an argument or the results of a poll.
The full text remains available in the older revisions, and links to it can be provided as part of the refactoring, so anyone who's interested can still find it easily.
In the case of acrimonious debates and flamewars, removing the heat helps promote good will and aids in forgiving and forgetting.
. . .?

No

Leaving the original version intact promotes openness.
Public discourse should not be altered.
. . .?

Discussion

Personally, I feel that the archives should not be refactored/reworked/summarized, except possibly on another page, with a link to summarizations placed at the top of the original page. For example, if we were to have a VfD or a RfA that were quite long, and someone wanted to make a nice summary, they could slap something on the top of the page saying "This discussion has beem summarized here by UserFoo", where here is a link to a subpage. Other people could post other summarizations/refactorings as well. --Improv 17:10, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am in total agreement with Improv on this. An archive is the history of what was said, and what was said is an important record of why people voted the way they did. Leave archives alone, do not edit or "refactor" them. Rick K 20:18, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

The only people I can see rewriting archives benefiting is those who have something to hide. Leave things out in the open instead of hiding them and calling it "refactoring". I also don't think it's constructive to have people getting into edit wars over RfA or VfD pages when they disagree with the refactoring. Leave old pages be. Shane King 05:19, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with all three of you. --DanDanRevolution 06:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Refactoring archives. I am not in favour of adding a summarization at the top because despite good faith it may have a biased POV. Much better for the reader to read the page and draw their own conclusions. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose You should not refactor archives. They are supposed to hold the entire contents -- whats the purpose if your removing and summarizing content? MrMacMan 00:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support in limited circumstances, but oppose anything extensive I do refactor my talk page archives for minor things, like sewing together a conversation that was spread out over my talk page and someone else's, but I always write a note that I have done this, and my archives have page history links at the top. See my talk page archives to see what I mean, particularly the early ones, as I have not gotten around to refactoring the later ones. I certainly do not support refactoring to the point of summarising, unless this is done on a separate page from the archives. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 03:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]