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 pages and User talk pages

Every editor (every person with a username) has a user talk page on which other contributors can leave messages. 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. 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.

• Unlike main article pages, user pages (also referred to as user space or user namespace) can have subpages with talk pages associated with them. For example, if you were user Hínandil, and you create a link to the page User:Hínandil/This_is_a_subpage, you could click that link and have a blank page to edit. You can use subpages to organize the different things you would like to publish through BoyWiki. See Help:User 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:

1. First item
2. Second item
   1. Sub-item under second item
3. Third item

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 Discussion page

Blanking of talk pages/discussion pages

From time to time, a discussion will have its content hidden from view based on the judgment of the community, an administrator, or another functionary.

Reasons for blanking

1. Vandalism
2. User request
3. Page is too long or contains outdated content
4. Content not relevant to article
5. Personal attacks and/or violation of BoyWiki:Terms of Service
6. Safety and security (Revealing personal information about yourself or others)
7. Off topic discussion (chit chat)
8. Using discussion pages as a message board (this is allowed within reason on your user talk page but not on article discussion pages)
9. Users are free to blank their user talk page at any time and without giving a reason except in cases of administrative action (violation of TOS) when the page maybe locked/(protected).
10. Free Spirits administrative action. Free Spirits reserves the right to blank or delete any page, in full or in part, at any time without giving a reason.

• See also: BoyWiki:Deletion policy

See Also

• BoyWiki:Namespace
• Help:User page