Help:Talk pages

Understanding Talk pages

Talk pages are a key feature of Wiki, offering the ability to discuss articles and other issues with other participents/users. They are not to be used as a chat room, soapbox, battleground or for general discussion of the article topic. If you have a question, concern or comment related to improving an article put a note in the article's talk page and not in the article itself. You do that by clicking the "talk" tab at the top of the page. Do not worry if the link shows up in red; it is all right to create the talk page if it does not already exist. If you are responding to someone else's remarks, put your comment below theirs. You should indent it properly (see section below). If you're not responding to someone else, but are posting about something new, use the "New section" tab at the top of the talk page to create a new section, which automatically goes at the bottom of the page. You should always sign your comments by typing ~~~~ for your username plus a time signature. Then, when you click "Save page", your signature will be inserted automatically. Otherwise your posting will still appear but without your name. (For your convenience, there is a button at the top of the edit box with a signature icon which inserts "--~~~~" when clicked.) User talk pages Every editor (every person with a username) has a user talk page on which other contributors can leave messages. This includes contributors who have not created an account. If someone has left you a message, you will see a note across the top of Wikipedia pages (if you're signed in) saying "You have new messages", with a link to your user talk page. You can reply in either of two ways. One is to put a message on the user talk page of the person you are replying to. The other is to put your reply on your own talk page beneath the original message. Both are common on Wikipedia; however, be aware that replying on your own talk page runs the risk that your reply won't be seen, if the user does not look at your talk page again. If you intend to use this approach, it is a good idea to post a notice to that effect, at the top of your talk page, so people know they have to keep an eye on the page to see your response, rather than getting your response on their page. Indenting Indenting can improve the layout of a discussion considerably, making it much easier to read. A standard practice is to indent your reply one level deeper than the person you are replying to. There are several ways of indenting: Plain indentations The simplest way of indenting is to place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph. For example: This is aligned all the way to the left. : This is indented slightly. :: This is indented more. is shown as: This is aligned all the way to the left. This is indented slightly. This is indented more. Bullet points You can also indent using bullets, which are also used for lists. To insert a bullet (when your edit is saved), type an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation. A brief example: * First list item * Second list item ** Sub-list item under second * Third list item Which is shown as: First list item Second list item Sub-list item under second Third list item Numbered items You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or "octothorpe" (#). This is usually used for polls and voting, and otherwise is fairly rare. Again, you can affect the indent of the number by the number of #s you use. Example: # First item # Second item ## Sub-item under second item # Third item Shows up as: First item Second item Sub-item under second item Third item Example discussion Experiment Experiment! This time, instead of editing a sandbox, leave a message on the talk page by clicking "Discuss this page" or "Discussion". Remember to sign your user name. You might want to try responding to someone else's post. Remember, you should use "Show preview" to see if your formatting works before you save. Try a sample discussion at this page's [[talk:Help:Talk pages|Discussion page]] For more information, see BoyWiki:Namespace