Template talk:Talkheader

Nice header

Nice header. :-) But shouldn't it link to things from our community standards rather then Wikipedia?--Bob^{'s your uncle} 14:59, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Nyaargh! Never seen so many wp links in so small an area! Kill! Kill! Susan^{talk to me} 15:25, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Oh yeah, I was going to start a discussion here about what we need to do with {{talkheader}}. I just arrived here recently, and I wanted to copy over some templates from other wikis that I need to feel comfortable. Obviously we should customize {{talkheader}} to reflect the policies and guidelines of RationalWiki, if any, but due to my virginal newb status (be gentle, although I can't honestly say it's my first time) I haven't figured out what all of those are yet. Also, it's taking some adjustment to get used to the idea that this wiki actually has people who watch what I do. --Teratornis 15:54, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

The community standards are here RationalWiki:Community Standards. In the event that you wished to suggest new ones you would need to make a proposal on the community standards talk page.--Bob^{'s your uncle} 17:07, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the tip. It looks like the only part of that page specifically about talk pages is:

• However, the user talk page space is public and does not belong to the user. No deletion of talk page material is permitted, but archiving may be done periodically.

It would be nice to work coverage of that statement into {{talkheader}} somehow. Maybe I can stick an invisible name anchor into RationalWiki:Community Standards to make that particular sentence linkable (that is, if RationalWiki permits the <span id="..."/> tag). {{Talkheader}} is nice for people new to MediaWiki because it at least provides a link to start editing a new discussion topic section, and it mentions that there are talk page guidelines of some sort. I don't see anything on RationalWiki:Community Standards which is specifically about talk page mechanics, as in how to make new sections, indenting our replies, and so on. Is it OK to leave that link pointing to wp:Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines for now, which does describe the mechanics? RationalWiki:Community Standards of course can replace some or all of the right-side links on {{talkheader}}. --Teratornis 17:24, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Ideally we would create a page on RW that has the pertinent information, we can copy WP's and trim down and snark it up with our..unique style...as a short term solution perhaps a link to WP, but would be better to keep links on RW if possible. tmtoulouse ^torment 17:27, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Personally, I agree with TMT. Given that goals and policies here are different from WP, it might create confusion to link there. It'd also be nice to avoid sending people off-site in a template that could become common. We could add [[RationalWiki:Talk page guidelines]] to the help section and use that.--Bayes^update 17:31, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

I could have sworn that we had something on indenting and avoiding bullets - but I can't find it now. Creating such a directive would be uncontroversial though.--Bob^{'s your uncle} 17:34, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

(undent)This Google search of RationalWiki suggests you may be thinking about Help:GetAround which says:

• Please, please, please do not use asterisks (*) to bullet your comments in talk pages.

(I don't believe my bulleting of that excerpt constitutes a violation of it, as I believe the "your comments" part applies to one's original comments rather than material one is quoting.) Thanks for calling our attention to that page. It contains a pseudo-section heading about talk pages, which might serve as starter material for the proposed talk page guidelines page. Incidentally, it looks to me like the name of that page should be something like: [[Help:Talk page]] to be consistent with the existing help page naming scheme. I don't think adding "guidelines" to the title is necessary, although we could make a redirect from the longer title if someone needs to refer to the page that way. --Teratornis 14:45, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

I might add that this "can't find it now" problem is what I hope to solve with User:Teratornis/Index. Also see: User:Teratornis#Useful searches. --Teratornis 14:48, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

And another problem: missing style class

To get {{talkheader}} to display correctly, I need to get at least one style class added to MediaWiki:Common.css. I'm editing up my request on RationalWiki talk:Help now. --Teratornis 15:54, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

User:Tmtoulouse took care of this - quickly. Thanks! --Teratornis 17:43, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Jumped the gun

I made changes to RW links before I looked on this page :-(. Sorry if I stepped on toes.--Bayes^update 17:25, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Well, it links to RW guidelines now - but they are not necessarily guidelines for talk pages.--Bob^{'s your uncle} 17:28, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, I just wanted to fill the space in the template so it wouldn't look weird in the meantime. Not married to the current link set-up at all.--Bayes^update 17:32, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

It's cool. Looks like we're on it above anyway. :-) --Bob^{'s your uncle} 17:40, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

It looks fine to me. --Teratornis 17:53, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Another cool feature

Say, while I'm creating disruption and headaches for everybody, there's another cool feature to mess with in MediaWiki: the talk page text (at MediaWiki:Talkpagetext). On the corporate wikis I administer, we customized that text like this:

• <!-- MediaWiki:talkpagetext --><div id="talkpagetext" class="plainlinks metadata" style="margin: 0 0 1em; padding: .5em 1em; vertical-align: middle; border: solid #aaaaaa 1px">This is a '''[[w:Help:Talk page|talk page]].''' Please follow the [[w:Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines|talk page guidelines]], and remember to [[w:Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages|sign your posts]] using four tildes (<tt style="background: white;"><nowiki>~~~~). Hint: at the end of your post, you can click the "Your signature with timestamp" button (second from right) on the w:Help:Edit toolbar|edit toolbar.</nowiki>

(For some reason, some of the markup seems to slip past the nowiki tags I wrapped it in.) Anyway, that's more code I ripped off from Wikipedia; it displays a box with instructions above the edit window when a user edits on a talk page. Of course the Wikipedia links would have to go. --Teratornis 17:53, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

I am keeping track of this suggestion here: User:Teratornis/Wiki tasks#Customize MediaWiki:Talkpagetext. --Teratornis 01:53, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

What say we kill this useless template?

This is not our style, our talkpages are for discussing whatever comes up, not just "improving the article". I will delete soon unless someone complains. ħuman 02:39, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Kill it DEAD! 02:52, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

It's probably one of the few reasons anybody would look at our etiquette page, but yeah. Talk pages are for talk. ~ Kupochama^[1][2] 02:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

And I found it (again) because you quoted it on a talk page. It is not our style. And, thanks Susan for nowikiing the places that link here. None of which matter. ħuman 03:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

They were mostly connected with one person who shall be nameless. 03:34, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Nameless unless one reads most of the above talkpage ;) ħuman 04:37, 24 July 2010 (UTC)