Help:Talk pages

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Information on how to avoid becoming upset while using Wiktionary to discuss can be found at Help:Interacting with humans'

A talk page is a special Wiktionary page containing discussion about the contents of its associated "subject" page. To view the talk page of an article, click on the "Discuss this page" link in the sidebar or at the bottom of the screen. When you are in the talk page, clicking on "View article" will take you back to the main article.

Inevitably, there will arise situations in which collaborators on an article can benefit mutually from discussing the article--thus we have designated a namespace specifically for such discussion.

Contents 1 What is it used for? 2 User talk pages 3 "Post a comment" feature 4 A few tips 5 Refactoring talk pages

[edit] What is it used for?

On Wiktionary, the purpose of a talk page is to help to improve the contents of the article it is attached to. Questions, challenges, excised text (due to truly egregious confusion or bias, for example), arguments relevant to changing the text, and commentary on the page is all fair play.

[edit] User talk pages

Your user page has a talk page as well, and that one has some special features. For one thing, there is a link to it in the header next to your name (if you use a "skin" other than the default it may be somewhere else). Also, if edits are made to it by others, the text You have new messages will appear at the top of the page. These pages can be used for occasional personal communication among users; but note that these pages are public. If you want to communicate privately, use e-mail (see Wiktionary:Emailing users).

To write in another user's talk page, click the Discuss this page link on your sidebar when you view the user page (which you can do by clicking on a user's nickname). On the list of recent changes and on your watchlist, you can directly access a user's talk page by following the (Talk) link behind the user's name / IP address.

[edit] "Post a comment" feature

For editing a talk page, one can optionally use the "Post a comment" feature, but only for a new thread and for a reply to be put at the bottom of the last thread.

• For a new thread, fill in the "Subject/headline" box. Then the edit summary is automatically the same as the new section header.

• For a reply to be put at the bottom of the last thread, do not fill in the "Subject/headline" box. In this case it is not possible to supply an edit summary. Instead, edit the previous thread.

When using "Post a comment", an edit conflict is impossible. However, in the case that you are not starting a new thread but replying to an existing one, your response may be appended to a newly created post that was added while you wrote yours. It is therefore generally recommended to use section editing to respond, and "Post a comment" to start new threads. If your comment is accidentally misplaced, just edit the page and move it.

[edit] A few tips

These style guidelines have been adapted from the style guidelines at Wikipedia and are presented here as suggested methods, not rules. Following these guidelines is appreciated but not required.

• Sign your posts: To sign a post, type three tildes (~~~), and they will be replaced with your username after saving, like this: HappyDog. Type four tildes (~~~~), and they will be replaced with your username and time stamp, like this: HappyDog 15:50, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC). On Wiktionary we recommend that you try to always Sign your posts on talk pages. You can also use a pseudonym, or just "--anon".

• Use indenting to keep 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.

• Separate discussion topics: Put each new topic under a different headline (== Subject ==). The "Post a comment" feature accomplishes this automatically when you enter a subject line. The edit summary is automatically the same as this header. Thus every thread is a section. This allows section editing of the thread in question (see Wiktionary:Sections). You can also use horizontal lines (----), although some users strongly dislike them.

• Proceed vertically: The further down the contribution to talk, the later it was made.

• Feel free to ignore typographical conventions: Do as you please to make your points clear. The style guide is for articles.

• 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.

• Don't misrepresent other people: Typing errors, grammar, etc are always fair game, and remove personal attacks where you can, but don't edit someone's words to have them say something they don't believe in. Editing or deleting your own words is up to you. Avoid context swizzling.

• Archive rather than delete: 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. Then create a new page. (See Wiktionary:How to start a page and Wiktionary:How to archive a Talk page for details.) Place the page in a talk or Wiktionary 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 discussion (or refactor): After a discussion on a page has died down for several weeks or the discussion has become heated and long, you (if you can be smart and respectful at the same time) might replace the discussion with a summary of major points, as though you were (!) writing an encyclopedia article about the discussion. If the discussion entailed opposing arguments, present the arguments from an unbiased point of view. Where possible, distinguish the common ground from the points of contention. See Refactoring talk pages below.

• Keep to the topic: Not layout, but worth keeping in mind. Talk page discussions can be much more humorous and POV than the typical article, but personal attacks don't do much to make articles better.

• 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.

[edit] Refactoring talk pages

A point of terminology: the notion of refactoring, in the context of a wiki, means basically cleaning up and reorganizing a page such that all the useful information on the page is preserved and made more accessible. It's relatively rare that one needs to entirely refactor a Wiktionary article --usually, edits and additions are what is necessary.

The purpose of talk pages is to assist in creating better articles. Therefore, the purpose of refactoring talk page discussions is to help create good dictionary articles, at least in the long run. A short-run purpose is to channel a discussion in a useful direction, that is, to help aim it at the future time when it can be used in a dictionary article.