Wikinfo:Editing Talk Pages
From Wikinfo
Contents |
What is a Talk page?
A talk page is a special page containing discussion about the contents of its associated article, or the topics related to the article. To view the talk page of an article, click on the "discuss this topic" link. When you are in the talk page, clicking on "view article" will take you back to the main article. Inevitably, there are situations in which collaborators on an article can benefit mutually from discussing the article or its issues, thus talk pages are designated specifically for such discussion.
Why are they used?
On Wikinfo, the purpose of a talk page is (a) to help to improve the contents of the main page, from an encyclopedic point of view, and (b) to discuss the larger topics arising from the article. Questions, challenges, excised text (due to truly egregious confusion or bias, for example), arguments relevant to changing the text, and commentary on the main page are all fair play.
That said, editors are fallible creatures, so it's entirely natural that a bit of partisan wrangling takes place on talk pages - and occasionally this even leads to improvements in the article. Further discussions can be opened in the Forums, if need be.
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 near or at the top of every page. 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 the "email this user" function from their user page.
To write in another user's talk page, click the "discuss this topic" link 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 after the user's name.
Standards and Conventions
A few community standards do apply to talk pages, these are not to be taken strictly as "rules" but were evolved by users to make the talk pages more useful and easier to read.
- Sign your posts: To sign a post, type three tildes (~~~), and they will be replaced with your username after saving, like this: User:FJB. Type four tildes (~~~~), and they will be replaced with your username and time stamp, like this: User:FJB 12:55 Jan 15, 2008 (UTC). Even though Wikinfo requires a login, we still recommend you sign your posts on talk pages (and elsewhere, too). You can use a pseudonym/nickname in your preferences.
- 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, she starts 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: Use a solid horizontal line, ----, to change the subject. To make the change more noticeable, put in a headline or a few key words in bold.
- Proceed vertically: The further down the contribution, the later it was made.
- Feel free to ignore typographical conventions: Do as you please to make your points clear. The style "rules" are 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 edit other people's (Talk) words: Ever (except for obvious typing errors). Editing or deleting your own words is up to you.
- 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 talk page and archive the old one. (See Wikinfo:Editing/Creating Pages for details.) Archive the old page by giving it a new name, or making it a "subpage", such as "User talk:Proteus/Sorrowed Talk 1". Often people simply add "archive" to the original name - it's up to you. Provide a link to your archive, and 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. If you use the subpage feature, then a link back to the original will be automatically added.
- 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.
- Keep to the topic: 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.
Refactoring Talk pages
The notion of refactoring, in the context of a wiki, means basically the rewriting of a page so as to preserve all the useful information on the page. It's relatively rare that one needs to entirely refactor an article - usually, edits and additions are what is necessary.
The purpose of talk pages is for discussion and to assist in creating better articles. Therefore, the purpose of refactoring talk page discussions is to help create good encyclopedia 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 an encyclopedia article.
There are a number of talk or other discussion oriented pages which could use a bit of traditional Wiki refactoring. There's useful content there, sometimes, that can be transferred to the article itself. Sometimes large chunks of old talk pages can be completely wiped out with no harm done - feel free to do so, unless you think there's some value in preserving the discussion. In refactoring a talk page, one solid recommendation is to use the traditional wiki refactoring technique of adding a summary with whatever consensus we've arrived at the top, grouping separate discussion items together, and placing them towards the bottom.
Example
This article is great. -blah
- No it isn't! --fish
- Yes it is! --wojahowicz
- I was talking --fish
I like wojahowicz better. -blah
- Now, now. -Barney Miller
We need some organization here. -anon
- We really need better content. --Alfred
- Yeah, but what about contributors? -anon
References
- Adapted from Wikipedia article, "Wikipedia:Talk page" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk page, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
