Template:Talk header

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This template is a signpost. It displays a talk page message box with four sections of content:

• § Intro – a short introduction and appropriate links for newcomers
• § Policies – a reminder of important policies for experienced users
• § "Find sources links" – a set of links to aid in finding reliable sources for the article topic
• § Archives – a list of links to the current talk page's archives, and a search box to search them

Portions of the standard boilerplate text may be modified with params that specify additional or replacement text.

Usage

{{Talk header}}

To add this template to a talk page, just open an edit of the talk page, and put {{Talk header}} at the top of the page.

By convention, this template goes at the very top of the talk page, above WikiProject templates and other talk-page banners. However, this is not an absolute rule, and editors should use common sense when deciding its placement. See also: Wikipedia:Talk page layout § Lead (bannerspace).

Should this be added to every talk page?

There is no mandate to have this template appear on the 6,439,841+ potential talk pages. This template should not be indiscriminately added to pre-existing talk pages, especially not with bots. That said, the template should not be removed from talk pages simply because it is there.

For more information on this topic, see the talk page for this template, including the talk archives and the TfD logs.

Parameters

Full syntax – Vertical

{{Talk header | bottom= | custom_header= | wp= | display_title= | arpol= | sc1= | sc2= | sc3= | sc4= | sc5= | demospace= | hide_find_sources= | search_term1= | search_term2= | search-domain= | noarchive= | search= }}

Horizontal

{{Talk header |bottom= |custom_header= |wp= |display_title= |arpol= |sc1= |sc2= |sc3= |sc4= |sc5= |demospace= |hide_find_sources= |search_term1= |search_term2= |search-domain= |noarchive= |search= }}

Hiding the template

A registered user who prefers not to see this template on any talk page, may hide it from view. Note that this hides page archive links and the archive search box as well if they are configured to be shown through this template. You'll need to have an account to do this.

1. Edit your user style page at Special:Mypage/common.css.
2. Add a line: #talkheader {display:none;}
3. Save the change.
4. Bypass your cache.

To only hide the intro/newcomer links and talk page policies, but leave the find sources and archive sections visible, instead use the line:

#talkheader tr:has(> td > .talkheader-body) { display:none; }

Portions of the template may be hidden for all viewers using a template parameter: see here to hide the "find sources" links; see here to hide the archive links.

Parts of the header

This section describes the different parts of the header. Each subsection below corresponds to one of the four main areas of functionality listed in the bullet items at the top, and explains which parameters are available to modify their appearance.

Intro and newcomer links

Basic tips for newcomers are boxed with a white background and appear top left, and includes starting a new section and how to get help. The intro links are displayed in the top left portion of the message box:

Policies

Talk page policies

A bullet list of policies, and behavioral and talk page guidelines is included by default in the top right portion of the message box.

Article policies

In the article namespace only, a list of bulleted "Article policies" is included by default. It occupies part of the top right section of the message box, to the right of the talk page policies.

In non-article namespaces, the "Article policies" box is absent by default, but it may be added via |arpol=yes. For example:

{{talk header|arpol=yes}}

Note: |arpol=no is an invalid setting, and has no effect on header display in any namespace. The article policies may be suppressed from view in all namespaces by adding #talkheader .talkheader-policies{display:none} to your common.css.

"Find sources" links

For article Talk pages, a set of "find sources" links appears by default in the Talk header box. The default links correspond to the output of Template:Find sources; see Talk:Europe for an example. These links appear after the initial article policies and links for newcomers, and above the archiving section. For the article Europe, it looks like this:

Background

There are several flavors of "find sources" links (medical, video, general) targeted to different search domains. The flavor of "find sources" links displayed in the Talk header depends on WikiProject membership of the article and may correspond to one of these:

• {{find medical sources}} – for articles in the medical search domain
• {{find video game sources}} – for articles in the video game search domain
• {{find general sources}} – the default, for everything else, is the general domain.

The default search domain is "general", which is the large majority of all Talk pages, and displays the links found in template {{find general sources}}. The search domain is determined automatically by the template, depending on the presence of the corresponding WikiProject. If an article belongs to WikiProject Medicine, it is in the medical search domain by default; if it belongs to WikiProject Video games, it is in the video game search domain by default. (If it is in both, then the highest domain in the list above is chosen; i.e, 'medical'.)

Example

For the page Talk:Giardiasis, which belongs to WP:WikiProject Medicine, it looks like this:

You can modify the nature of the source links displayed by § Hiding the links, § modifying the query terms, or by § modifying the search domain.

Hiding the links

By default, these links do not appear outside of article Talk space (ns=1).

Within article Talk space, the "find sources" links may be suppressed by setting parameter |hide_find_sources=yes.

Modifying the "find sources" query terms

The find sources links use the article title by default as the search term and forms an "exact search" (or "double-quoted query") from the title. If the article title contains parenthetical disambiguation portion, this is appended after the exact search query term, as an additional, unquoted phrase.

In place of the default, the query terms may be specified by using |search_term= (alias: |search_term1=) to specify the exact search string. Parameter |search_term2= may be added to specify additional, unquoted query terms, as many as desired.

Search domain override

The default domain chosen by automatic WikiProject detection may be overridden using param |search-domain=:

• |search-domain=medical – use medical as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: med)
• |search-domain=video game – use video games as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: video, and vg))
• |search-domain=general – use general as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: gen)

The parameter alias |domain= may be used instead; thus, |domain=med means the same thing as |search-domain=medical.

Archives

The archives section of the Talk header occupies the bottom of the Talk header box. It consists of (up to) three portions:

• a set of links to Talk page archives
• archive bot notice
• an archive search box

The first and last portions are displayed automatically at the bottom of this template when used on a talk page that has archives that are named in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no archive links or search box is displayed. The archive bot notice is only displayed if parameters are manually added.

Parameters |noarchive=yes and |search=no are available to suppress the links to Talk archive pages and to the search box. There can be an automatic § archive bot notice adjacent to the archive links.

Setting up archiving on a Talk page is independent of the Talk page header. Pages can be set up to be automatically archived by a bot (typically by Lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III); see Help:Archiving a talk page for how to do this.

Links to archives

If Talk page archives exist and are named in the standard sequential way, using either a numeric sequence or the alphabetic system with names like /Archive A, or with yearly archives of the format /Archive 2024, links to all of the archive pages are displayed. If this template cannot find any archives because they are not named the standard sequential way, it will behave as if no archive pages exist.

|noarchive=yes suppresses links to archives.

For archives using numeric sequencing, the archive links look like this (example shown is for Talk:Europe):

A link to the archive index is included in the list if it exists and has the standard name "/Archive index". There is no parameter to independently suppress this.

Archive bot notice

The talk header offers an archive bot notice containing the text "Auto-archiving period" at the right for informational purposes. It does not set up automatic archiving, it merely reports what type of archiving has been set up, if any. For instructions on how to configure Talk page archiving, see Help:Archiving a talk page. If archiving has been set up, it is reported automatically from the archive configuration data on the page. An example is given just above, showing an archiving period of 180 days.

For archiving bots that use hours as the default units, values over 23 are converted to days, rounded to the nearest half-day, so that a config parameter of |age=4320 for such a bot will result in the same 180-day example as shown above. In these cases, the tooltip pop-up value remains denominated in hours.

Note: Formerly, four parameters were available for users to configure the bot notice manually; however, the bot notice is now generated automatically directly from the archive config data. The four parameters are therefore no longer required, and should not be used.

Search box

The archive search box may be used to search the Talk page archives, and is displayed automatically at the bottom of this template just below the archive page links, when used on a talk page that has archives that are named in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no search box is displayed.

Parameter |search=no may be used to suppress the search box and the archive links.

If present, the search box appears below the Archiving links, and is the last element to appear in the template:

In this working example, entering search terms searches the talk page archives of the article Europe.

Suppressing links or search box

By default, the Talk header template displays a list of archive links, if any archives are present. Parameter |noarchive=yes may be used to suppress the list.

By default, the template displays an archive search box if any archives are present. Parameter |search=no may be used to suppress display of the archive search box. Note that, in particular |search=yes has no effect, and will not place a search box on a talk page that has no archives.

Additional and replacement text

Besides the four main sections of the talk header box, the template provides three parameters which may be used to include additional sections or modified text:

• |bottom=
• |custom header=
• |wp=.

bottom

|bottom=yes – adds a message above the main talk header box, separately bordered, about where to place new discussions:

custom_header

|custom_header=your text here – adds any desired text above the main talk header. Text is in boldface by default, and has a horizontal rule below, separating it from the rest of the content.

Example

Showing |custom_header= with the first line of Lorem ipsum text:

If used together with |bottom=: the "New discussions placement" text appears above everything in a separately bordered box; the main talk header box is below that, and the custom text appears in the main box, above the newbie and article policy links and separated from them by a horizontal rule.

wp

|wp=yes – Extends the bolded lead sentence of the header, to add the words "Pagename and anything related to its purposes and tasks" as follows:

This parameter should not be used outside of the Wikipedia talk namespace.

Testing issues

Find sources testing

For testing and demonstration purposes, this template accepts parameter |demospace= which enables testing of the find sources opt-out parameter |hide_find_sources= from other namespaces.

• If |demospace= has the value main or the value 1 it returns the findsources text it would normally return when transcluded from mainspace.
• If |demospace= has any other value such as the name of some other namespace it returns the text it would if transcluded outside of mainspace.
• If the parameter is empty or undefined, the actual page type determines the result.

The dynamic features of WikiProject autodetection and § Search domain override depend on the article title where it appears, and therefore cannot be tested in the normal way. The test cases page provides an explanation of how to test these features using Special:ExpandTemplates with the ContextTitle enabled, or by using in situ testing.

Expensive parser functions

This template uses up to 22 expensive parser functions (during 2024, with it increasing by one a year) depending on what parameters are used. In theory, on pages with very large numbers of other templates using expensive parser functions this could result in template limits being reached, but this is very unlikely. It could also affect expansion of templates on a test page that has more than 22 uncollapsed invocations of this template, especially ones appearing lower on the page.

TemplateData

A signpost for the top of talk pages

Template parameters[Edit template data]

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Shortcut	1 shortcut shortcut1 sc sc1	Shortcut that displays similar to the {{shortcut}} template, but within the Talk header message box Example WP:SHOR	Page name	suggested
Shortcut 2	2 shortcut2 sc2	A second shortcut	Page name	optional
bottom	bottom	Set to "yes" to add additional instructions at the top to "please place new discussions at the bottom of the talk page" Suggested values yes	Boolean	optional
Custom header	custom_header	Replaces the entire header with customized text	Line	optional
WikiProject?	wp	For use on WikiProject talk pages; set to "yes" to add "and anything related to its purposes and tasks" to the header	Boolean	optional
Display title	display_title	Displays a custom page title	String	optional
Article policies	arpol	Adds a link to the article policy pages Default On for article talk pages, off otherwise	Boolean	optional
demospace	demospace	Namespace number or name for testing purposes	String	optional
Hide find sources?	hide_find_sources	Set to "yes" to hide the find sources banner on article talk pages	Boolean	optional
Search term	search_term search_term1	Changes the search term used in the {{find sources}} module	String	optional
Search term 2	search_term2	Adds a second search term for unquoted search, as used in the {{find sources}} module	String	optional
Search domain	search-domain domain	Changes the default search domain used in the {{find sources}} module Suggested values medical video general	String	optional
No archives?	noarchive noarchives archives	Set to "yes" to hide the archives links Suggested values yes	Boolean	optional
Search	search	Set to "no" to override the default behavior for the search box appearance	Boolean	optional

Tracking categories

• Category:Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters (0)
• Category:Pages using Talk header with deprecated parameters (2)

See also

• {{New discussion}}
• {{Not a forum}}
• {{Portal talk}}
• {{Skip to talk}}
• {{WikiProject banner shell}}
• Wikipedia:Template index/Talk namespace
• Wikipedia:Template index/User talk namespace
• MediaWiki:Talkpagetext

Notes

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Talk header/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (edit | diff) and testcases (edit) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.