Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines: Difference between revisions

This page documents an English Wikipedia [[:Category:Wikipedia WP:TPGs|WP:TPG]]. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

[[Category:Wikipedia wp:tpgs|Talk page guidelines]]

When writing on a Wikipedia talk page, certain approaches are counterproductive, while others facilitate good editing. The prime values of the talk page are communication, courtesy and consideration. The following list is designed to help Wikipedians use talk pages effectively.

A talk page is research for the article, and the policies that apply to articles also apply to talk pages. Research and debate should meet the same standards of verification, neutral point of view and no original research. There is reasonable allowance for speculation, suggestion and personal knowledge with a view to to prompting further investigation, but it is a serious misuse of a talk page to continue to argue any point that has not met policy requirements.

• Communicate: If in doubt, make the extra effort so that other people understand you and you get a proper understanding of others. Being friendly is a great help

• Keep on topic: Talk pages are not for general conversation. Keep discussions on the topic of how to improve the associated article.

• Stay objective: Talk pages are not a forum for editors to argue their own different points of view about controversial issues. They are a forum to discuss how the different points of view obtained from secondary sources should be included in the article, so that the end result is neutral and objective (which may mean including conflicting viewpoints). The best way to present a case is to find properly referenced material. (For an alternative forum for personal opinions, see the m:Wikibate proposal.)

• Deal with facts: The talk page is the ideal place for all issues relating to verification. This includes asking for help to find sources, comparing contradictory facts from different sources, querying statements without references and examining the reliability of references. A simple way to query an unsourced assertion is to place {{fact}} after it, which results in ^{[citation needed]}.

• Share material: The talk page can be used to store material from the article which has been removed because it is not verified, so that time can be given for references to be found. New material can sometimes be prepared on the talk page until it is ready to be put into the article.

• Discuss edits: The talk page is particularly useful to talk about edits. If one of your edits has been reverted, and you change it back again, it is good practice to leave an explanation on the talk page and a note in the edit summary that you have done so. The talk page is also the place to ask about another editor's changes. If someone queries one of your edits, make sure you reply with a full, helpful rationale.

• Make proposals: New proposals for the article can be put forward for discussion by other editors. You can ask for comments on changes you are considering to get more input on them.

• Assume good faith: Treat the other person in the discussion as a fellow editor, who is a thinking, feeling person, trying to positively contribute to Wikipedia, just like you — unless, of course, you have firm, solid, and objective proof to the contrary, which can be validated by a third party. Someone's disagreeing with you is no such proof!

• Be concise: If your post is longer than 100 words and is not a detailed, point by point discussion (and if it is, see below), consider shortening the result. Long, rambling messages are frequently difficult to understand, and therefore difficult to deal with appropriately. As a result, rambling posts are frequently either ignored or misunderstood.

• Read the archives: Many article talk pages contain links to archived earlier discussions. Often the archived discussions contain relevant information related to commonly contested content and the resolutions to previous content disputes. New editors to a particular article are encouraged to read any archives before posting their questions so that the talk page maintains a good signal to noise ratio, as opposed to one that is filled with repetitive postings. Talk pages that have a good signal to noise ratio are more likely to attract continued participation. An additional benefit to reading the archives is to avoid resurrecting previously settled disputes prompted by commonly-made objections.

• Use English: No matter who you are addressing your comments to, it is preferred that you use English on English Wikipedia talk pages. This is because one's comments should be comprehensible to the community at large. If you consider you must engage in a talk page discussion in another language, please provide a translation of the comments if possible or on request. If you can not, either find a fluent third party to do so or contact a translator through the Wikipedia:Embassy.

• Voting: Various pages invite you to vote on a topic. Using the posting conventions of this section, add your vote as a bullet (*) underneath the relevant topic and bold (''') your actual vote. Your vote will typically not carry much weight unless you include your rationale for the vote. Make sure to sign your post (~~~~), as described above.

Please note that the following are of sufficient importance to be official Wikipedia policy. Violations (and especially repeated violations) may lead to the offender being banned from Wikipedia.

• No personal attacks A personal attack is saying something negative about another person. This mainly means:
  • No insults: Don't write that user such and so is an idiot, or otherwise insult them (even if they are an idiot). Instead, explain what they did wrong, why it is wrong, and how to fix it.
  • Avoid ad-hominem attacks: Calling somebody a fascist or the like is generally not a good way of supporting your argument.
  • Don't threaten people: For example, threatening people with "admins you know" or having them banned for disagreeing with you.
• Don't make legal threats: Threatening a lawsuit is highly disruptive to Wikipedia, for reasons gone into at the linked page.
• Don't misrepresent other people: Conversations must remain to show accurately what took place. This means:
  • Don't edit comments: Refrain from editing others' comments without their permission (with the exception of prohibited material such as libel). It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Never edit someone's words to change their meaning.
  • Don't change your text: Obviously you can edit or delete your own words, while you are still composing the initial text, but afterwards, you should not do so, as this will put others' comments in a different context. Even if no one has replied, someone may still have read what you have written — so think before you speak! If you wish to amend your statement, use strike-through or a place holder to show it is a retrospective alteration. Strike-through looks <s>like this</s> and ends up like this.
  • Unsigned comments:You are allowed to append {{unsigned}}, {{unsigned2}}, and {{unsigned3}} to the end of someone's comment if they have failed to sign it. The form is {{subst:unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}, which results in —The preceding unsigned comment was added by USER NAME OR IP (talk • contribs) ..
  • Substitution: Although you may help to substitute warnings on user talk pages, it is not recommended and is also quite tedious for a human, which is why there are one or more bots that perform substitutions. (See MeatBall:ContextSwizzling).

If you are having a disagreement or a problem with someone's behavior, please read Wikipedia:Resolving disputes.

Some examples of talk pages on controversial topics are Talk:Abortion, Talk:Capitalism, Talk:Socialism, Talk:Jesus Christ, and Talk:Evolution.

• Separate discussion topics, with new topics at the end: Put each new conversation topic or major thread at the end of the talk page, under a different section header (== Subject ==). This uses section headers like the "Subject line" in email messages. The "Post a comment" feature can be used to do this automatically. (If you're using the default Wikipedia:Skin, use the "Plus" tab to the right of the "Edit this page" tab.) Enter a subject/headline in the resulting edit page, and it will become the section heading. This allows section editing of the thread in question (see Wikipedia:Sections). The edit summary automatically includes section heading information, making it much easier to track a particular conversation. The section headers also appear in the talk page's table of contents (once there are several of them), giving a list of conversation topics in chronological order.

• Proceed descendingly within topics: Within each topic, chronological order should also be preserved: the further down the contribution to talk, the later in time it was made.

• Use indenting to keep the threads of the conversation straight: The first contributor is all the way to the left, the next person starts with one colon (:), the next person starts with two colons. Then, when the first contributor responds, they start at the left margin again, and the second and third persons continue to mark themselves with one and two colons respectively. In that way, who is saying what is clear. Other indentation systems are equally acceptable and widely used (such as a threaded tree format, like that often seen in email clients). The important thing is that the sequence of talk should be easy to follow.

• Use whitespace when making a point by point discussion: While conciseness in a talk page discussions is always desirable, sometimes, when engaged in point by point discussions, it is impossible to be brief. In such cases, use paragraph breaks when you've reached the end of your discussion of one point. This results in a much clearer post, that is also easier to respond to.

• Sign your posts: To sign a post, type three tildes (~~~), and they will be replaced with your username after saving, like this: Eloquence. Type four tildes (~~~~), and they will be replaced with your username and time stamp, like this: Eloquence 03:44 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC). (The latter is usually preferred, to make it easy to piece together the chronology of a page.) Comments can be further customized in Special:Preferences, like so: --Maru (talk) Contribs 00:37, 27 October 2005 (UTC). No comments are really anonymous, because anyone can check the history of the page to find out what user or IP address posted any given text. Signing your post is a common courtesy which allows people an easy way to see who is speaking; unsigned posts are confusing.[reply]

• Avoid markup: Don't use a lot of Italic text, Bolded text, or CAPITAL LETTERS. These are considered SHOUTING, and contribute to the view that you are RANTING!!!!!

• In particular, Avoid HTML markup: Use of HTML markup where equivalent wikimarkup works fine is frowned upon, except the use of <s> operator for retracting parts of your own posts that have since been superseded. (Using <s> on another user's posts is covered by "Don't misrepresent other people", above.)

• Archive rather than delete: Avoid deleting comments on talk pages, particularly comments made by others. When a talk page's content has become extremely large or the discussion of the issue in hand has simply died down and no one has a reasonable chance of adding to it, create a new page. (See Help:Starting a new page and Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page for details.) Place the page in a talk or Wikipedia talk namespace. Give it an explanatory name. Often people simply add "archive" to the original name. Explain on the archive page where the text you plan to archive will come from and provide a link. Cut the relevant content from the original page and paste it into the new page. Replace the text on the original page with a link to the archive. An alternative is to summarise the discussion and provide a link to the version with the full text.

• Summarize ("refactor"): See Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages for details on why and how to refactor talk pages.

• Make links freely: Links to articles are as useful on talk pages as anywhere else, and links to non-existent articles can help get them onto the most wanted pages list.

• Use UTC when referring to a time, e.g. the time of an edit or page move.

• When discussing the name of the page, cite the current name: if the page is moved afterwards, the Talk page is usually also moved, so then it would not be clear what you were talking about and people may think e.g. that you are suggesting to change the new name, while you were referring to the old one.

• Feel free to ignore typographical conventions: Do what you need to to make your points clear. The Manual of Style is for articles.

Please refrain from using headers to personally address people on talk pages. Headers should be used to facilitate discussion by indicating and limiting topics related to the article. For instance, you could make a header whose title describes in a few words one problem you have with the article. This will make it easy for people to address that issue, work towards consensus, and eventually resolve the issue or dispute and improve the article. Thanks and happy edits.

Per Wikipedia:No personal attacks, please refrain from being critical and negative in headings on talk pages. Keep in mind that you may think you are being critical about details of the article, but those details were written by individual editors, and thus you are criticizing their edits and them.

Article talk pages should be used for discussing the articles and how to improve them, not to criticize, pick apart, or vent about the current status of an article. This does not mean one should not use talk pages to propose improvements: Headings on article talk pages should be used to facilitate discussion and article improvement by indicating and limiting topics related to the article in a positive, fair, and NPOV manner.

Write headers whose titles in a few words describe the issue or problem you have with the article in the form of a question, through a broader issue, or as a positive assertion. For example: If your issue with the article Dinosaur is that it states that "All dinosaurs walked on two legs." Do not write a heading on the talk page: "This article is completely wrong and stupid," or, "Morons think all dinosaurs walk on two legs," or even "All dinosaurs did not walk on two legs." Rather, attempt to make your headings welcoming to those you disagree with. Try, "Did all dinosaurs walk on two legs?", "Dinosaur locomotion", or, "Brontosauri walked on four legs". This will make it easy for people to address that issue, work towards consensus, and eventually resolve the issue or dispute and improve the article. Thanks.

One exception of the style guideline is the template talk page. This is because the talk page usually functions as two pages, so it's recomended to use level 1 headers to separate the issues. Example:

=Documentation=
=Discussion=

or

= Documentation =
= Discussion =

One major reason to do this is that using section=new will create a level 2 heading, and it's preferable to separate discussion and documentation so a new comment is placed under discussion. See also {{doctl}}.

• Wikipedia:Wikiquette