Help talk:Archiving a talk page

Maybe this should include something about alternative methods. I'm starting to wonder if archived talk pages are useful, particularly for pages with a large number of edits. For example, if you want to work on the creationism article, do you really want to read six whole archives on the matter first? Recently on the deletion policy page, I summarised the earlier discussion and just provided a link to the history of the page where the full text could be found. Would it make sense to add this as an alternative? Angela 21:11, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)