Help:Discussion pages
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Discussion pages are pages for discussions associated with pages or with users.
As always a good way to learn is to look at the documentation (in essence this page), look at how other have done it (by browsing talk pages), and by doing what seem to work.
Five simple rules
In order for a discussion to be easy to follow these five rules apply:
- Discuss a page or with a user on the associated discussion page
- When replying, do so below the comment you are replying to
- Add one more level of indentation than the comment you are replying to by using one more colon (
:) - Sign your comment using four tildes (
~~~~) - Sum up your comment in the edit summary using one or two sentences.
What to discuss
The discussion pages and village pump are intended for discussing the contents of the wiki. Duh!
Where to discuss
- Reply to a comment on the same page.
- Discuss with a user on the users discussion page.
- Discuss the contents on a page on the discussion page associated to that page
- Discuss the wiki in general, or more than one page, or with more than one user on the village pump (the Discuss! link on the left).
You will automatically be notified about edits to your discussion page the next time you log in or load a page on the wiki. Optionally you can configure the preferences so you also will receive an email.
Formatting your reply
When you reply to a comment, add your reply below it. Please add an empty line between your comment and the preceding one. Sometimes you may even want to add two.
When needed, comments can be nested. The indentation makes it possible to see which comment you are replying to.
Add one more level of indentation than the comment you are replying to by using one more colon (:)
You can use more than paragraph of text, just remember to begin each of them with the right number of colons.
You can use the same wiki formatting as on any other page.
Remember to sign your comment using four tildes (~~~~)
Signing comments
To make it easier to follow who said what, please sign your comment using four tildes (~~~~).
Upon saving the page the four tildes will be expanded to a signature showing who who signed and when.
You can customize your signature to some extent on the User profile tab in your preferences (see link on the top right). The changes will only apply to the signatures you will add after the change, not to previous ones.
Example
Example heading
Example comment.
Example user (talk) 12:00, 1 February 2015 (EST)
== Example heading == Example comment. [[User:Example user|Example user]] ([[User talk:Example user|talk]]) 12:00, 1 February 2015 (EST) : Your reply. : ~~~~
Editing comments
Avoid editing your posts after saving them, unless the changes are only very small like spelling and grammar.
If you want to add something it is often better to add another comment using the same indentation. Remember to sign that comment as well.
Do not edit comments of other users, not even spelling or grammar! Apart from that is considered very impolite, it will also show up in the page history.
Signing unsigned comments
If you find an unsigned comment, it can be signed using the {{unsigned}} template.
You will need to add the user name who added the comment as well as time and date it was added. The easiest way to do that is to use successive approximation, in essence sifting through the revision history (see the View history tab on top of the wiki pages) in smaller and smaller halves, until you have zeroed in on the edit that added the comment.