Help:Talk page
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See Wikia Help for general Wikia- and wiki- related help. See  Meta-Wiki HelpIntro for basic MediaWiki usage!
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Talk pages
Every page, that is not itself a talk page, has (potentially) an associated talk page in the corresponding talk namespace.
- Talk pages for regular articles are used to discuss changes to the article.
- User talk pages are used to leave messages for a particular user. "You have new messages" is automatically displayed on all pages that the user views, until the user talk pages is viewed by the user.
Please sign your posts on talk pages. Use --~~~~ (two dashes followed by four tildes) to produce e.g. "--Mikk 06:44, 23 August 2006 (EDT)".
It is also customary to indent responses to a previous post to emulate a threaded view of e.g. mail or forums posts:
Hello. --[[User:Fandyllic|Fandyllic]] 09:12, 22 August 2006 (EDT) : Hi! --~~~~ |
Hello. --Fandyllic 09:12, 22 August 2006 (EDT)
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Use the full page name
When discussing the name of the page or discussing merging it with another page, always mention the current page name: after renaming (moving) a page with its talk page, references to "this page name" would not make sense.
Quickly posting new discussions
The "Post a comment" feature allows convenient appending of a section with the section header the same as the edit summary, and typed only once.
- Hint: The "new section" feature also works on other than talk pages; there's just no link for it. Use the url directly, e.g. http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=Sandbox&action=edit§ion=new. Click the edit this page tab and then append "§ion=new" to the resulting URL!
Talk namespaces
What differentiates a talk page from a regular page?
Except for special pages, each namespace has an associated talk namespace. The talk namespaces are designated by adding talk: to the normal prefix. Examples:
- The talk page for "Main Page" is "Talk:Main Page"
- The talk page for "User:Mikk" is "User talk:Mikk"
- The talk page for "WoWWiki:Guidelines" is "WoWWiki talk:Guidelines"
See also
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There is a talk page or discussion page attached to every type of wiki page.
The most commonly used are article and user talk pages. They exist for communicating with other Wikians about articles and improving the wiki. Just click the "discussion" or "talk page" link at the top of any page to find it. This link may be red while the page is empty, and another colour when there is some conversation happening on the page.
Talk page types
User talk pages
Registered contributors have a personal talk page where other users can leave messages. Just click the "discussion/talk page" link at the top of a user page. If someone leaves a new message on your talk page, you will see a bright banner across the top of all other Wikia pages you visit. Click the link in the message (or the userbar link "My talk") to go to your talk page.
There are talk pages for non-logged-in contributors too, but these may not always be useful. As they are linked to IPs, and IPs can change between visits, the messages may not get to the right person. While they are used to try to explain blocking of an IP address and may identify where a user is, they may not be very useful for real communication. This is another good reason to create an account.
Article talk pages
Each page in every namespace has its own talk page which can be used to discuss the contents of the article/policy/help page/etc. Leaving a message here does not create a "new messages" banner in the same way user talk pages do, but anyone with an interest in the page - especially those who see the page on their watchlist or on recent changes - may reply.
Using talk pages
Comments on talk pages can be picked up by Google and other search engines, and are available under a Creative Commons license, so keep that in mind when you write.
It's possible to add a new section to a talk page without opening the whole edit page. Just click the "Leave message" or "+" link at the top of the article, or the "Leave a new message" link at the end of the page.
You will be given spaces to enter a title for your new section, and to enter your comment. You can then save, and the comment will be added as a new section at the bottom of the page. This makes it useful for really large discussion pages.
Some other general guidelines for talk pages:
- Sign your comments by typing "~~~~" (four tildes). This will add your name and a timestamp.
- Add comments to the end of the page.
- When replying to a comment, indent your reply by placing a colon (":") at the beginning of a line.
- Keep your comments polite and friendly. It's always best to be civil, even if things get heated.
Archiving talk pages
If any talk page gets too long, you can create an archive by typing [[/Archive]] (or any other name you like to use) onto the talk page. You can click the new link (preferably in a new window), copy over the older comments, then remove them from the main talk page.
For more detailed advice on this, visit Help:Archiving talk pages.
