CZ:Talk Pages

Talk pages or discussion pages are wiki pages attached to articles, found at the "discussion" tab, on which contributors describe and explain their edits, or offer criticism or ask questions of other contributors' work. It is important that contributors use this page, particularly after changing the article in some way for which others might need an explanation.

There are several rules that govern how talk pages work. Perhaps the most important are found as part of our policy about Professionalism. Also:

• Do not edit other people's comments. This includes interspersing replies into the text of a pre-existing comment. Doing so is particularly problematic since the replies make it unclear who is saying what, so simply refrain from doing so at all. Add your reply after the end of the comment you're replying to. (An exception is that constables, in exercising their wiki moderator function, may sometimes find it necessary to delete problematic comments from talk pages.)
• Refrain from using talk pages to discuss the merits of the subject of the article, when irrelevant to how the article will be written. The purpose of talk pages is not to settle general debates; in other words, talk pages are not general debate forums. Since articles must be neutral, most such debates must be fairly represented on the talk pages.
• If you find yourself becoming frustrated, see Dispute Resolution, but don't hestitate to call a constable by e-mailing [email protected].

For further help with talk pages, see how to use talk pages.

Archives

When talk pages get too long they should be archived.

The standard place where to archive a talk page is a subpage of this talk page. The standard name for such a subpage is "/Archive n" where n is a suitable number.

Thus talk page archives to a main space article Citizendium are called Talk:Citizendium/Archive 1, Talk:Citizendium/Archive 2, etc.

Archives for user A. Citizen are called User talk:A. Citizen/Archive 1, User talk:A. Citizen/Archive 2, etc.

If this naming convention it used, the template {{Archive box}} produces a convenient means to navigate between the talk page and archive pages. It is best placed on top (or near the top) of the talk page and all archive pages. It provides various parameters with which the appearance of the template can be influenced.

There are two possibilities to archive content:

• Some Citizens use to move sections from their talk page to the archive by cut-and-paste.
  In order to do so, you first have to create a new archive page:

For example, search for User talk:A. Citizen/Archive 1 (using the "Go" button rather than the "Search" button) and then choose "create page" (or follow a red link to this page).

Then use your operating system to transfer selected talk page content from its edit window to the new page.

• This method has the advantage that you can select which parts of your current talk page you want to archive and which parts you want to keep.

• Other Citizens prefer to move the talk page to the archive page.
  In order to do so:

Click the "move"-button on top of the page, add (in "To new title") (e.g.) "/Archive 1" to the name of the page, and hit "Move page".

Then replace the resulting redirect by the {{Archive box}} template and other top page material.

This method has two advantages:

• The page history reflects the development of the archived content.
• The listings of user contributions still point to the page that actually shows the edit.

If you want to keep selected parts of the talk page this has to be done by copy/cut-and-paste.

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This is the archive box:

Talk Pages

Current page

1, 2

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