Misplaced Pages

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Misplaced Pages Help NA‑class

This page is within the scope of the Misplaced Pages Help Project, a collaborative effort to improve Misplaced Pages's help documentation for readers and contributors. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. To browse help related resources see the Help Menu or Help Directory. Or ask for help on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you there.Misplaced Pages HelpWikipedia:Help ProjectTemplate:Misplaced Pages Help ProjectHelp NA This page does not require a rating on the project's quality scale.

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YOU MIGHT BE ON THE WRONG PAGE.This page is not meant for general questions, nor discussions about specific articles. This page is only for discussions about the Misplaced Pages page Help:Talk pages. To discuss an article, please use that article's talk page. To ask for help with using and editing Misplaced Pages, use our Teahouse. Alternatively, see our FAQ.

Question about other Talk pages I've seen

Why do I see stuff in discussions talking about things like minor grammatical errors in an article, and people asking if someone can correct those? Couldn't that person just have easily have corrected the mistakes themselves? Is that bad to automatically correct stuff we see wrong with articles, or are we supposed to discuss things first?Amnion (talk) 02:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not at all bad. Typos and grammar can and should be fixed right away of course, and being BOLD and edit without prior discussion is an integral part of editing here.
I know of three reasons for such talk page requests:

• The article is semi-protected and the user is editing anonymously or his account is too new to edit those
• The user doesn't dare to edit articles and rather asks experienced users to take care of it.
• The user doesn't know or isn't sure how it should be worded instead

Amalthea 16:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Accessing a Talk page – Experience of a beginner

"To access a talk page look for a tab or link labelled discussion, or discuss this page. These tabs or links will be found either at the top of the page or on the left hand side (near edit this page). Users using the Classic skin will see "Discuss this page" instead."

What this paragraph means is:

When you want to write a comment about an article on the page, you have to use a Talk page. To find a Talk page, you won't find one by looking for a label (or tab) labelled Talk page. Instead, you have to look for a tab called, confusingly, Discussion. The Discussion tab is on the top of the page that you are looking at, probably to the left of a tab called Edit this page (if there is one). Click on the Discussion tab. The page that you see on the screen is called a skin, with a particular layout. There is one layout called a classic skin. On a classic skin layout, the tab for the Talk page is called Discuss this page. To open the Talk page, click on the Discuss this page tab.

This is just one paragraph, but typical of the difficulties of most of the explanations given.

Is there anywhere in Misplaced Pages that explains how to use it at the level of a novice?Michael Harpur Edwards (talk) 15:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure: H:TMM. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

And just recently created, INTRO:TALK should be able to help you out. JoeSmack 03:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Talk page guidelines needs to be moved up

The top of the article says it is a guideline, but I couldn't find the info I wanted til got to the See also section way at the bottom and the link to the Misplaced Pages:Talk page guidelines. It would be helpful if it could be more up on top, something like "See also: etc." Thanks. CarolMooreDC (talk)

Second time I've come here for advice and low and behold, only found what I wanted by seeing my old message! I guess I should just be bold and do it. CarolMooreDC (talk) 00:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell

Added "This page in a nutshell". Iceblock (talk) 14:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Just updated it a bit, think it's ok if not revert and I'll discuss here... LeeVJ (talk) 23:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Indent specificity

The present guidelines on how to indent comments properly are not very helpful, for they are vague and they actively encourage talk page commenters to leave a mess for somebody else to come along and clean up. They say, inter alia:

The first comment in a section will have no colons in front of its paragraphs; the second will have one colon in front of each paragraph; and each subsequent commenter will add one more colon. When a long discussion has many indents (many colons before each paragraph), the discussion may be awkward to read, particularly for people with smaller computer screens. Eventually, for everyone's convenience, an editor will remove all the colons from his or her next reply, usually briefly noting the formatting change. Replies to that comment are formatted as if it were the first comment in a new discussion.

This is really not very helpful. What means a "long" discussion? What means "many" indents? And why are we cavalierly assuming that "for everyone's convenience" an editor will act to clean up the mess? Beyond a level-four indentation (four colons preceeding text), the text block grows distorted: unreasonably narrow and unreasonably long. There is also a reference to editors "usually" making note of the indentation reset, which is about as silly and pointless as a buzzer to warn you that your stereo is turned on. If the indentation is reset, it's immediately obvious. No comment to the effect of "Look, look, I reset the indentation!" is necessary.

I propose refining the indentation guidelines as follows:

If there are no colons before the first characters of the paragraphs you're responding to, you use one. If one, you use two. If two, you use three. If three, you use four. If four, you reset the indentation by using none. When you edit the page, arrange your text like this:

Comment text from an editor
:Comment text from a second editor
::Comment text from a third editor
:::Comment text from a fourth editor
::::Comment text from a fifth editor
Comment text from a sixth editor
:Comment text from a seventh editor
::And so on
:::And so forth
::::et cetera
Lather, rinse, repeat

—Scheinwerfermann ·_C02:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

• "Many indents" = however many seem like a lot to the editors participating in the discussion.
• "long discussion" = however long long seems long to the editors participating in the discussion.
• It's not necessary to define either of the above. Would it really help if the guideline said it happened in discussions that are specifically 50 lines or more? These are just descriptions of what generally happens during discussions, and what is a convenient way of keeping them readable no matter how long they get.
• "Eventually, for everyone's convenience, an editor will remove all the colons from his or her next reply, usually briefly noting the formatting change." -- This doesn't mean an editor will take it upon themselves to clean up other people's comments. It means that in someone's next response, after a comment with a lot of indents, an editor may simply leave out all indents, the same as you've illustrated for the responses that come after the 4-colon lines. Your example is pretty much the same as the instructions that are on the page now.
• "...editors 'usually' making note of the indentation reset, which is...silly and pointless...it's immediately obvious. No comment...is necessary." -- A comment is necessary to let everyone know that the person responding with no indent does indeed still intend his comment to be a response to the previous comment, rather than the beginning of a new discussion. And yes, people do usually make a note that they're doing that, using "←" or "(outdent)" or "(resetting indent)" before their response. Equazcion •✗/C • 13:28, 7 Feb 2009 (UTC)

H'mm. I appreciate and respect your substantial contributions to protocol and guidelines, so I'm kind of disappointed that your response here is essentially circular: I perceive and identify a potential problem, and you reply by stating what I identified as a potential problem. Obviously you don't perceive a need for greater specificity in talk page guidelines, and that's fine; it's just that your tone comes across as rather more condescending and dismissive than you might've intended.

I do not feel the guidelines are adequate as they stand; let me have another try at explaining why: You're right that they don't explicitly call for an editor to come in and clean up the mess, but in practice the only alternative is letting the conversation grow unreadable, and that frequently occurs. When the editors participating in a discussion simply increment the colon count ad infinitem, not caring much about its readability because they've been keeping the hierarchy in mind from the start, that makes it unnecessarily difficult for others to join in the discussion without raising points and asking questions that have already been covered (but are sufficiently difficult to read due to the high-level indenting that they just get skipped). Most discussion participants welcome participation from more than just the first arbitrary number of editors who see and respond to the initial post, so it seems sensible for guidelines to suggest a maximum indent level before reset. On the other hand, I agree with your implication that there's no call for unnecessarily prescriptive talk page protocols. That's why I'm here; guidelines are not rules and they certainly aren't laws. They serve as a friendly nudge toward behaviour that benefits the whole community, not as a paddle with which to spank those who prefer to proceed otherwise. —Scheinwerfermann ·_C23:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If you simply think the guideline should specify a maximum number of indents before "resetting" to no indents on the next reply, as it seems to me, I suppose that's a possibility, as long at it were worded as a mere suggestion -- but I doubt it would make much of a difference in practice. Besides, the examples in the guideline seem to suggest a max of 3 or 4 colons. When you encounter a discussion that you feel has gotten too messy with indents, you could take it upon yourself to clean it up. I've done that before. I'd hesitate to add in such a suggestion to the guideline though, since anyone taking it upon themselves to do that would need to be very careful to preserve others' comments, including their intended threading structure. This is aimed towards beginners who might not be able to do such a great job at that, and might end up stepping on some toes messing with other people's comments. Equazcion •✗/C • 00:08, 8 Feb 2009 (UTC)

Terrific, it looks as if our agreement outweighs our disagreement: yes, I am advocating primarily for a guideline/suggestion per se on the max number of colons. You're right that it likely won't have anything like a magic-wand effect of immediately eliminating 5th- and higher-order indents, but well-written guidelines suggesting good practice tend to percolate through the community and eventually influence behaviour. One other point I didn't mention is that when the colon count grows beyond four, it grows increasingly difficult to count them so as to add one more. I've done a great deal of hierarchy cleanup on various talk pages myself, and you're right; even for an experienced editor with a good grasp on the discussion underway, it is challenging to do so without introducing threading errors — I agree with you that we should not explicitly encourage editors to do such cleanup. —Scheinwerfermann ·_C00:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure which number to choose, as any choice would be pretty much arbitrary. On counting colons, I usually don't even bother. I just copy the previous line's colons to the clipboard, paste them on a new line, then type one more. Equazcion •✗/C • 00:43, 8 Feb 2009 (UTC)

I'm suggesting four thoughtfully rather than arbitrarily. The cut-paste-plus-one technique certainly works to circumvent the colon-count issue, but it's nice to visualise a world without such hoops to jump through (that's the same world wherein every driver uses his turn indicators every time, and nobody ever tries to use the express lane at the grocery with more than fifteen items, but at least we can try…).

On the issue of ← or other means of calling out the indentation reset: I have certainly seen it, but having participated in a great many discussions (and perused many more), I don't find it to be a standard practice, or even a particularly common one, and I don't do it myself. I really don't think it's necessary or especially helpful; I have very seldom seen indent-reset create difficulty in following the continuity of a thread. Have you? —Scheinwerfermann ·_C01:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Talkpage problem

Could someone take a look at Talk:The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and blah figure out why the archives aren't showing up right? It's displaying as /Archive 1.00000000000000000000000000000. TJ Spyke 05:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

It was a software update problem WP:VPT. Resolved for now. DoubleBlue (talk) 05:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Confusion

This guideline seems confused as to whether it wants to use the term "talk page" to refer to only article talk pages, or to refer to all talk pages. For example, the second sentence which says A talk page is a space for editors to discuss improvements to articles and other pages, is misleading, since user talk pages most definitely have almost nothing to do with improvements to pages in Misplaced Pages, except in the sense that every single posting at Misplaced Pages ultimately has the goal of improving articles.

Or consider this, from the nutshell box:

• What's the meaning of a talk page?

• To let multiple users collaborate on improving an article

Well, not really; a template talk page or a category talk page have nothing to do with improving any particular article, and, as mentioned above, a usee talk page isn't even about improving anything other than perhaps an editor's behavior; it can be used to invite an editor to participate in a WikiProject, to commiserate (failed RfA, vandalism problem), to post an award, etc., none of which directly improves any particular page.

At minimum, this guideline needs to be changed so that sentences like "Talk pages serve as a place for comments about articles, ... " are corrected to read "Article talk pages serve as a place for comments about articles, ... " Unless there are objections to that, I'll be happy to do so unless someone else gets there first (and anyone is welcome to, of course). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Editing archives

A recent 3RR report of Fhue (talk · contribs) led me to realize this page and Help:Archiving a talk page have no explicit guidelines about how you shouldn't edit an archive. Long story short, this user was changing the content of a thread that had already been archived from ANI, and got into a revert war over it because he believed that "there is no rule against editing archives". (Also, the ANI archives don't have the usual {{archive}} tag at the top.) Granted, anyone with half a brain should understand that you're not supposed to edit the archives, but it made me think, should a bullet point or something be added here (or at Help:Archiving a talk page) being more explicit about the fact that archives should not be edited? rʨanaɢ /_contribs 05:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I just realized this question would be more appropriate at WT:Talk page guidelines. Reposting there. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 05:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Redlinks to useless content.

I think the word "discussion" should be shown in red if it contains only "{{WikiProject Ireland|class=start |importance=low}}{{WPMA}}" things. It causes me to look to discussion page ("what do people think about this article?") and find out that there are actually no comments.

May be there should be a list of templates that does not cause page to be considered as "existing" one? _Vi (talk) 18:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

What I think you're saying is that you are bothered by the fact that when an article's talkpage consists only of banners such as "WikiProject Ireland" but no actual discussion, the link leading to it from the article (usually rendered as "Discuss this page") turns blue leading you to believe there is quality discussion when in fact it's just banners. I recall this issue being raised before, don't recall where though... So you propose that certain templates don't cause the MediaWiki:Talkpagelinktext to turn blue? I don't know if that could even be done with template coding, but I don't think you'll get much consensus for it. -- œ 02:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Is Talk Page a good place for such banners? May be there should be dedicated place for such things. Such banners looks a bit like if every redlinked page contain "This page is not yet written" banner, turning links to them to blue. I tried 10 random pages: only 2 pages have redlinked talk page and 8 pages have blue links to talk pages that are only of banners. It means that most of blue links to talk pages don't really lead to any discussion. May be there should special auto-added banner "This page has useful information at discussion" on each article that contains normal discussion? May be I should write a patch for MediaWiki that will allow marking some templates as "no-bluelinking"? (What chances that such patch will be approved?) _Vi (talk) 23:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes well, it may not be interesting to readers but editors may find such banners useful by directing them to relevant WikiProjects. They're also needed for the category system to group all articles associated with a certain WikiProject.

You're suggesting that WikiProject banners and the like have their own dedicated namespace? Interesting idea.. I suggest you propose it to Willage pump proposals and your template patch idea to Village pump technical. There they can be discussed in detail. -- œ 23:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The proposal at "Village pump (proposal)" is moved to "Archive 50". Does it mean it is failed and I should send the second proposal to the "Village pump technical" (about tempates without bluelinks)? _Vi (talk) 08:20, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes you can try Village Pump technical, maybe you'll have better luck there. Usually if it gets archived it means there just wasn't much interest in the proposal. You should try rewording a little and proposing it again maybe in a few weeks. -- œ 17:17, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Talk page pruned of irrelevant posts August 2009 --œ 02:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Compacting the nutshell box

The nutshell box is quite big, and I suggest that the bulleted lines are made bold, and moved up right next to the text on the previous line. Like this:

This page in a nutshell: What's the meaning of a talk page? To let multiple users collaborate on improving an article How to get there? Every page has its own "discussion" tab, just click on it. How to ask a question, start a discussion or make a comment? Click on the "new section" tab. How to contribute to a discussion? Scroll down to the right discussion, and click

Iceblock (talk) 13:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This page and the other guidelines

We can surely do something about this: we have this page and WP:Talk page guidelines, both marked as guidelines. Surely we can either combine them, or else make this page (the descriptive one) into a help page rather than a guideline? I would suggest renaming this page Help:Talk page and then moving the other one (still a guideline) to WP:Talk page.--Kotniski (talk) 14:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

• All right, let's see what happens by being bold. I'm going to replace the guideline tag with a how-to tag, and propose (below) that the page be moved to Help:Talk page.--Kotniski (talk) 10:42, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was page moved. @harej 18:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Talk page → Help:Talk page — - As a guideline, this would be redundant to WP:Talk page guidelines. But in fact the content here is technical help, not community norms. Hence it's a clear case where the help page should be in the help namespace, and the corresponding guideline (which could later be moved to this title in fact) in WP space.--Kotniski (talk) 10:42, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree on both moves. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 21:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

faster help

when you sign on wikipedia shouldn't there be a faster way to get quick help?~hessy10119♥~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hessy10119 (talk • contribs) 15:26, 31 December 2009

Care to elaborate? --Swift (talk) 15:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion/talk

so, wikipedea has articles & talk pages about those articles, & an article about talk pages, & this is a talk page about the article about talk pages. so, this is a talk page about an article about talk pages about articles. does anyone else see this as random?

& if someone replys to a comment i made on a talk page of an article, will i know unless i go & check? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don't look back in anger (talk • contribs) 15:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

You got it ! and no, unless someone replies on your own talk page, you do have to check the page ... until they finish and decide to implement Misplaced Pages:LiquidThreads that is, maybe... Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 17:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for telling me on my page, i had no-idea you'd replied. that really does answer my question! J (talk) 18:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Only one skin

Only one skin picture ('Monobook') is available here. Please post of 'Vector also'. -- Extra999 (talk) 16:43, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

"New Messages" box for subpages

I was wondering, if someone were to edit the talk page of my RfA standards page, would I get a new messages box? If so, if I clicked on the "new messages" part, would it take me to my ordinary talk page or the subpage talk page? --The High Fin Sperm Whale 03:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

i made one

and it got deleted, can you help me?Sonicboy1 (talk) 07:06, 25 March 2010 (UTC)me

No, your talk page is still there. It hasn't been deleted. Click the "talk" link above, or go to User talk:Sonicboy1. David Biddulph (talk) 08:32, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposed update

I propose we update this page by adding a recommendation that users add a linebreak before replies, when they are on the same indent level as the previous reply. This is necessary to give the same vertical spacing as the rest of the comments. The two different vertical spacings can be seen in the example on the current help page: in the second table, George's reply to Jane is too high. (Compare it with her reply to John above.) In that example, it doesn't matter too much because the comments are so short they don't reach the right margin. But typically comments do reach the right margin, and, depending how long the last line is, the lack of proper paragraph spacing means that at a glance it's not always obvious that there's a break between two replies in this scenario. From this discussion at the Technical Village Pump, it seems there's no likelihood of a global fix, and it would be best to update this guidance accordingly with the workaround. PL290 (talk) 09:18, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Article redirected, what happens with talk page?

I've just redirected Dennis Nolan (college football coach) to Dennis E. Nolan (the same person). Redirect still has its talk page (wikiproject tags and nothing else). Should it stay, be blanked or ... ? East of Borschov (talk) 09:25, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Roald Amunsden

Its good to be able to look up history but even better when its family. Roald Amunsden was my great great grandad, and good to see his discovery never went unseen. T —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.155.162.49 (talk) 17:41, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Discussion page voting

I have a suggestion! Maybe Misplaced Pages discussion pages should be arranged like Reddit, where it is possible to rate and comment on each individual comment. The comments could then be sorted by popularity, date etc. This would make the pages much more readable and allow for an easier recognition of the consensus on a particular topic.

This might be a terrible idea (and may have been posted in the wrong place?); I do not edit Misplaced Pages articles very much, but I think my suggestion may be useful! What do you think? I'm pretty sure Reddit is open source, so this could make implementation less problematic. I realise it's quite a significant change, but I'd be willing to help with the programming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.90.74 (talk) 18:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move to Help: Using talk pages

This talk page seems to attract a steady stream of posts that aren't to do with improving the help page: either requests for general help, or spam. I believe the title is the cause. It's confusing. "Help: Talk page" can sound like a general talk page for getting help on any subject. I propose we move it to Help: Using talk pages. PL290 (talk) 20:41, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done PL290 (talk) 05:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Forums

Where are the Forums? Does Misplaced Pages have forums? SeanWheeler (talk) 22:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Talk. Nathalie Handal

Dear Editors,

I made some changes from the NHANDAL account because I was unable to get into this orginal account. Wiki has sent me a new password so I am back on this original account.

The changes I made are about my nationality. I am French and American. I was ONLY orn in Haiti (foreigners can be born in another country and not be from that country, it happens all the time). Editors keep saying I am Haitian American which is INCORRECT. Kindly leave changes. I am French and American of Palestinian origin. I was born in Haiti. MY NATIONALITY is French and American. I DO NOT have a Haitian passport, am not a citizen of that country.

You can email me at Natalyahandal@aol.com I will also add this info on my site since Wiki keeps insisting on this WRONG information.

Thank you for your assistance. NathalieNatHandal (talk) 16:15, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

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