Talk page

A talk page, or discussion page is used in wiki collaboration to contain discussion about the contents of its associated main page. In the first wiki released to the public in 1995, Ward's Wiki, topic and discussion shared the same page.^{[citation needed]} The MediaWiki software package, however, provides for every content page to have its own corresponding talk page, in order to separate the discussion of writing and maintaining a page from the actual page content itself. Wikipedia, a wiki that uses MediaWiki and the most prominent and lagest publicly accessible wiki in the world, makes use of talk pages in various ways and has additional rules for talk pages that specifically relate them to the task of writing encyclopaedia articles. It in particular has different rules for the use of section headings on talk pages to those originally envisioned for MediaWiki.^[1]^[2]^[3]

MediaWiki

In the MediaWiki wiki software each article or other content page has a corresponding talk page. The purpose of these pages is for people who contribute to a single page to discuss changes to the content, such as why changes were made or were rolled back, and to resolve disagreements amongst themselves. The purpose of having a discussion page is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content.^[4]^[1]

For each type of content page, the associated talk pages have their own namespace. This namespace has, by convention (although this can be overridden in the configuration files), the same name as the associated content page namespace, but with the suffix "_talk". For example, the talk pages for the pages in the "Help" namespace are in the namespace "Help_talk". Each namespace on MediaWiki is numbered, and talk page namespaces have odd numbers.^[2]

One of the features of talk pages in MediaWiki is an additional hyperlink, next to the "edit" link, labelled with a plus sign ("+"). Following this link leads to a page editing form that, instead of editing the whole page (as the "edit" hyperlink does), or an existing section (as the "[edit]" hyperlinks next to the section headings do), edits a new section, which, when saved, is added to the bottom of the page with a second-level heading. (This is unlike the normal operation of web logs, where new comments are added to the top.) The contents of the heading are specified by a field on the editing form. This behaviour can also be turned on for pages in non-talk namespaces, on a page-by-page basis, by adding a so-called "magic word", the string "__NEWSECTIONLINK__", to the wikitext of each individual page.^[2]^[5]

Each account on a MediaWiki wiki has its own user page, which, like the article pages, has its own talk page. This talk page is a means of communication with other users of the wiki. However, there is no restriction in the software that talk pages must be used in that fashion. One of the distinctive features of user talk pages is that they cause a message to be displayed, to the user whose talk page it is whenever they next log in to that account, stating that "You have new messages (last change).". Two hyperlinks in that message allow the account owner either to read their entire talk page, or to look directly at the very last edit that has been made to that page.^[2]^[6]

Starting new sections

Different authorities have different recommendations for starting new sections over editing existing sections.

Broughton^[7] recommends for talk pages on Wikipedia that if a conversation is quite old (where "quite old" is a matter that he leaves to the reader's judgement, observing that even 3 months is not necessarily quite old) one should start a new section on a talk page in order to resume discussion, pointing to the prior discussion using an internal hyperlink (of the form "[[#Title of the prior section]]").

Choate^[5] observes that the point of the "+" hyperlink in MediaWiki is to "gently encourage" people commenting on talk pages to confine their comments to individual sections, rather than editing the sections containing the comments of other people.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia, a wiki that uses MediaWiki, makes particular use of talk pages for separating the internal workings of article development from the encyclopaedia articles themselves.^[3]^[8] On Wikipedia, although the pages are themselves called "talk pages", the hyperlinks to them, at the edges of the articles, are (confusingly, in Broughton's view) labelled "discussion".^[7]

The primary purpose of a talk page (also referred to as a /Talk page) is to improve the contents of the corresponding article, from an encyclopaedic point of view.^[9] Questions, challenges, excised text (due to confusion or bias, for example), arguments relevant to changing the text, and commentary on the article are typically placed on the talk page.^[10]^[11]

Sometimes, the editing of article pages is disabled at Wikipedia, with notices in the article referring users to the article's discussion page.^[12] Talk pages are also used to publicly recognize good articles, or good editing.^[6]

The organization of talk pages at Wikipedia is very different to the organization of article pages. Whereas article pages are essay-like, a talk page is a conversation. The page fomatting — the markup used to format text on the page — is the same, but the rules are different. Examples of the differences include italicization, boldface, and signatures. Italicization and boldface are used sparingly in articles, and not where they would challenge the neutral point of view, but are common on talk pages, since they allow editors to express themselves clearly. Similarly, signatures are forbidden on article pages, but are customary on talk pages.^[7]

Some other conventions apply to talk pages on Wikipedia:^[7]

When someone says "this page" on a talk page, they are usually referring to the main page that the talk page is associated with, rather than the actual talk page itself.
Piped links and shortcuts to Wikipedia policy, guideline, and instructional pages are common on talk pages.
Talk pages generally do not have standard sections at the bottom for footnotes, "see also" links, external links, and so forth. So citations must be placed within the body of a talk page comment.

Etiquette

Wikipedia has many rules for talk page etiquette, and for the uses of article talk pages. These include:^[7]

It is better to fix an article than to complain about it on the talk page.: Broughton points to Wikipedia's "be bold" exhortation (see Further reading) in explaining this. He observes, however, that boldness can sometimes be foolhardy. If an article's content has already been extensively discussed on the talk page, then boldly altering it, without at least first reading the article's editing history and all of the prior discussions on the talk page and its archives, is unwise.
Be specific rather than general.: Broughton recommends that it is best to point to specific text rather than to make general statements, warning that if one doesn't have the time to find such examples in the actual text of the article, then one shouldn't write on the talk page at all.
It is better to quote another person, that one disagrees with, directly than to paraphrase them.: Broughton observes that paraphrasing carries the risk that one will be accused of misrepresenting the statements of one's opposition. The convention for quoting is to use italicization.
Don't just name a policy, hyperlink to it.: Broughton comments that it is easy to hyperlink one's text to the encyclopaedia's rules, using the various shortcuts available, and this helps other people to find those rules. He also recommends directl hyperlinking to "diffs" when discussing individual edits, and hyperlinking to sources when discussing facts.
Use article talk pages as ways of detailing edit summaries.: An edit summary that says "see talk page" or "see discussion page" can be explained fully on the talk page.
Do not post personal information or poorly sourced or unsourced controversial biographical information.: Personal information, including names, addresses, and telephone numbers, whether of another Wikipedia editor or someone else, is viewed as not belonging anywhere in Wikipedia. Similarly, poorly sourced or unsourced controversial biographical information is against the rules of the encyclopaedia. Broughton recommends that if one sees such information, one should remove it immediately, hyperlinking one's edit summary (by using the markup "[[WP:BLP]]" in the edit summary itself) to the Wikipedia policy page that explains this, so that others can follow the hyperlink and (in Broughton's words) "edify themselves".
Chat is forbidden.: Comments and opinions on the subject of an article (e.g. one's opinion of a politician or of a celebrity) do not belong on Wikipedia article talk pages, but on web logs, discussion fora, or personal WWW pages. They have nothing to do with the process of improving Wikipedia articles. Again, Broughton recommends that if one sees such "wikichat" on an article talk page, one should remove it (unless it has, as happens in rare cases, led to constructive discussion about the improvement of the article).

References

^ ^a ^b Jeremy Malcolm (2008). Multi-Stakeholder Governance and the Internet Governance Forum. Terminus Press. pp. 188, 280. ISBN 9780980508406.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Anja Ebersbach, Markus Glaser, Richard Heigl, and Gunter Dueck (2006). Wiki. Springer. pp. 55, 80–82, 109, 120–121, 156. ISBN 9783540259954.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ ^a ^b Michael Abramowicz (2008). Predictocracy. Yale University Press. p. 264. ISBN 9780300115994.
^ Aaron Newman, Adam Steinberg, and Jeremy Thomas (2008). Enterprise 2. 0 Implementation. McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 185. ISBN 9780071591607.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ ^a ^b Mark S. Choate (2007). Professional Wikis. Wiley. p. 174. ISBN 9780470126905.
^ ^a ^b Christian Fuchs (2008). Internet and Society. Routledge. p. 316. ISBN 9780415961325.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e John Broughton (2008). Wikipedia. O'Reilly. pp. 145–152. ISBN 9780596515164.
^ Trevor Ian Peacock (November 2006). "The quality and trust of content in a wiki community" (PDF): 23. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ Jose Antonio Vargas (2007-09-17). "On Wikipedia, Debating 2008 Hopefuls' Every Facet". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-04-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
^ Katie Hafner (2007-08-19). "Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
^ Caroline Eisner, Martha Vicinus (2008). Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism. University of Michigan Press. p. 43. ISBN 9780472050345.
^ Dan Woods, Peter Thoeny, and Ward Cunningham (2007). Wikis For Dummies. For Dummies. p. 241. ISBN 9780470043998.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

MediaWiki

Starting new sections

Wikipedia

Etiquette

References

Further reading