Wikipedia:Tutorial (historical)/Talk pages

Talk pages

A key feature of Wikipedia is the ability to discuss articles and other issues with other Wikipedians.

If you want to ask a question about an article, or you have a concern or comment, you can put a note in the article's talk page. You do that by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the page. Don't worry if the link shows up in red; it's ok to create the talk page if it doesn't already exist.

When you post a new comment, put it at the bottom of the talk page. The exception is that if you're responding to someone else's remarks, put your comment below theirs. You can indent your comment by typing a colon (:) at the beginning of a line.

You should sign your comments by typing ~~~ for just your username, or ~~~~ for your username and a time signature (see the example discussion below). When you save the page, your signature will be inserted automatically. Most of us use time signatures because it makes following discussions much easier.

You can get a username by creating an account (it's free). If you don't have an account, or if you have one but haven't logged in, your computer's IP address is used instead.

Indenting

Indenting can improve the layout of a discussion considerably, making it much easier to read. A standard practice is to indent your reply one more level deep than the person you are replying to.

There are several ways of indenting in Wikipedia:

Plain indentations

The simplest way of indenting is to place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph.

For example:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

:This is indented slightly.

::This is indented more.

is shown as:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

This is indented slightly.

This is indented more.

Bullet points

You can also indent using bullets, usually used for lists. To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation.

A brief example:

*First list item

*Second list item

**Sub-list item under second

*Isn't this fun!

Which is shown as:

First list item
Second list item
- Sub-list item under second
Isn't this fun!

Numbered items

You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or hash symbol (#). This is usually used for polls and voting. Again, you can affect the indent of the number by the number of #'s you use.

Example:

#First item

#Second item

##Sub-item under second item

#Third item

Shows up as:

First item
Second item
1. Sub-item under second item
Third item

Example discussion

Here is an example of a well-formatted discussion:

Hi. I have a question about this article. I'm pretty sure purple elephants only live in New York! JayRandumWikiUser 02:49, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, last time I was in New York, the elephants I saw were green. — try2BEEhelpful 17:28, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think you should find a source for your claims. Living × Skepticism 20:53, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Okay, these elephant journals agree with me:

Elephants Monthly
Elephants World

— try2BEEhelpful 19:09, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I live in Australia, where the elephants look like kangaroos! The people below agree with my statement: -DontGdayMateMe 17:28, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

ElefantLuvr 01:22, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
AisleVoteOnAnything 05:41, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
alittlebehindthetimes 18:39, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Experiment

Experiment! This time, instead of editing a sandbox, leave a message on the talk page by clicking "Discuss this page" or "discussion". Remember to sign your user name. You might want to try responding to someone else's post. Remember, you should use "Show preview" to see if your formatting works before you save.

Continue with the tutorial.