Wikipedia talk:Talk page layout/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Some examples

Other example talk page layouts with multiple templates:

• Talk:Attack on Pearl Harbor
• Talk:Autofellatio
• Talk:Barack Obama
• Talk:Falun Gong
• Talk:George W. Bush
• Talk:Muhammad
• Talk:September 11 attacks
• Talk:Wikipedia

As you can see, especially in the controversial ones, {{talkheader}} does not necessarily always have to be at the top just below {{skiptotoc}}. And also can be seen is the need for an actual layout guideline, just by the inconsistency in placement of the various mess of templates in just these examples. -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 01:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Watch out for WP:CREEP

This could easily descend into instruction creep with trying to specify the exact order of every single template; please keep it simple. I see it's already trending in the wrong direction. If you want this to be usable by bots, who do a fair bit of the talk page template tagging, IMO you'll probably need to consider the following:

1. Define the sections by "Templates in Category:Foo talk header templates" or something else that a bot can actually determine. An explicit list can be used by a bot, but note that list would have to be updated every time someone creates a new template.
2. Include "Other" in your ordering, so there is a sensible place for a bot to put templates that do not fall into any of the defined categories.

Also, consider that templates with "small=yes" (or that same style in general) should probably go after the non-small templates. Anomie⚔ 02:40, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, good points to keep in mind. This is still just a very rough draft. -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 03:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this is WP:CREEP worthy already. Personally, I think as long as {{Skiptotoc}} is on/near the top (which could be done by a bot) then I don't care about the rest.--Rockfang (talk) 17:13, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that if you think of this as a style guide for human, this could be creep, but my proposal below would veer-away from that (IMO). This would not be a "style guide" for human-cleanup of talk pages, but rather for bot-cleanup. Surely you agree that a page with 10 Wikiproject banner ought to have them in a bannershell, and that it serves little to no purpose to have both {{talkpage}} (which lists archives if they exists) and {{archivebox}} on the page, etc...? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 18:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:BOTREQ#BannerBOT

It seems I came up with a similar idea, but you beat me by a day! I propose that we merge the efforts here. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I almost always put {{ArticleHistory}} after wikiprojects and use the "small" parameter to shrink it as this is of little use, IMHO, to most users. -- Banjeboi 09:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

OTOH, some people consider WikiProject banners absolutely useless, and so might find the {{ArticleHistory}} to be far more useful. Anomie⚔ 11:57, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I think as well that Articlehistory is far more important than these Wikiproject banners. Sometimes, they are added out of control. I remember that I spent a week trying to clean Wikiproject Greece from articles that their name was of Greek root.

I had in mind to propose an additional tab so that we put all this stuff away from the talk page. That would be a step forward. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:47, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikiprojects are there a s aresource even if some are seen as less valuable. I believe there is an effort to have banner shell apllied whenever there is three or more. The {{ArticleHistory}} seems to be useful only to a small group of editors to any given page and these same users are very likely to find it wherever it is. -- Banjeboi 20:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Project banners are mostly bookkeeping devices, these can be placed in banner shells without any real loss to the talk page. They serve to identify go-to places for getting feedback and whatnot, and to have bot-updated feeds such as WP:Article alerts and Cleanup listings. The article history template, however, is an editing device. Its purpose is to help those who want to improve the page, look at feedback it got, compared the current version with a reviewed version to see if POV got in, etc... Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:48, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes ... and those who are looking for such information will find it regardless. These are not the users that need to be led to prominent warning and navigation boxes. -- Banjeboi 04:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

"The rest [sic] banners should be placed alphabetically."

I disagree with this. In addition to, yes, being instruction creep, there's no reason why the more relevant ones shouldn't be first. For instance, on Talk:Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway, trains is before Cincinnati and Ohio, and if I were tagging it for business or companies I'd put those after trains, if not after Cincinnati and Ohio. --NE2 03:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this one. I had this in mind but I can't figure out how to write down a rule such as "the more relevant ones should go first". -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You just did, there is some verbiage, somewhere, that on high-trafficed talkpages care should be used to avoid redundacy. we are trying to serve our general readers and facilitate article improvement. Talkpages serve that effort. -- Banjeboi 10:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Please be bold and make improvements/modifications. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 11:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Although in general I think there should be some structure agreement to talk page templates, I do not think project banners should be placed alphabetically. I think it might be better to do things by relevance. I don't think it would make any more sense to do project banners alphabetically than to say external links should be placed in articles alphabetically.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that any proposal to make bots alphabetize projects is doomed to failure. There can be good reasons to not alphabetize them, and the bots will never know of it. However, that being said, we could still clump article-focused WikiProjects (WP Biography, WP Military History, WP Chemistry, ...) and meta-focused WikiProjects (WP Echoes, WP 1.0, ...). Again these wouldn't be a good enough reason for bots to edit the page, but if the bot makes an edit anyway, why not take the opportunity to introduce some structure? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

small=yes

See Wikipedia:TPT#Small option.

Small. Small small, small Smallsmall small Small. Small! Small small.

I believe we should transition to using |small=yes| throughout as the default for (almost) all many of the talkpage banners. It works so well, when people use it. But they have to be encouraged to use it. See Dan Ariely's TED talk (starting at 4:57) for an intriguing demonstration of the human tendency to use defaults.

Small. It cuts the cruft (or just shrinks it), but keeps everything visible - for both casual and expert users - to find, or stumble upon. Go small. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, most of the templates at Talk:Barack Obama, for example, need to be full-width. But the project banners and such, should/could always be small. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Image:All-small=yes layout mockup of Talk-Barack Obama.png

Looks awful to me. I'd rather have them in their own section at the top than have them streaming down the talk page squishing all the real discussion into half a column. Anomie⚔ 02:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I specifically mentioned those as being exceptions!?! WTH? -- Quiddity (talk) 19:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

What exceptions are you talking about? I have not used this parameter, but I must not understand your post. I read it as wanting nearly all talk page banners to use small and I do not notice any exceptions mentioned. If small makes the page look similar to the image, then I agree with Anomie's opinion that this is undesirable. I do not wish to have a decreased horizontal reading area for conversations and I would not want to have to scroll down the side of a talk page to locate the banner information I want to find. —Ost (talk) 20:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

You did vaguely mention exceptions, but you didn't really specify which ones. No matter how many exceptions, if the stack of small=yes boxes extends below the TOC and into the first section of discussion it'll be similar to the image as far as squishing real content goes. Anomie⚔ 21:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the imprecisely worded initial post. I have amended it slightly (and parsed out (unthumbnailed) the image that would have confused any late arrivers).

My point was intended to be, that using the small option will never catch on in any talkboxes, unless we make it the default in some of them.

On most articles, with an average quantity of talkboxes and talkthreads, an improvement would be the case. See Talk:TGV for example. Hitting 20 random pages, and 20 from my watchlist (as a random sampling) the all of them would have been improved by 90% of the boxes being small by default. eg Talk:Al Jardine and Talk:Dainis Ozols and Talk:List of digital library projects and Talk:Suikinkutsu and Talk:Linguistics and Talk:James Burke (science historian).

Some sort of size limiting device seems to need to be used - otherwise many more will probably grow to the size of those with embedded todo lists, eg. Template:WikiProject New Hampshire. "Small" is one of our options. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:53, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The only page in your list that doesn't result in the "squashed content" effect just by using small=yes on all templates that currently support it is Talk:List of digital library projects (and technically Talk:Dainis Ozols, because it has no content; if any is ever added, it will be squashed). I suspect the average number of talk threads is much lower than you expect, BTW, which means more than 1 or maybe 2 small boxes is likely to give this problem.

Note also that WP:BUNCH will be a problem if more than one template extends into the content area. Anomie⚔ 11:57, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

A mix of the two is preferable. All small is dreadful and just as unhelpful. -- Banjeboi 04:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Using the small option along with its ability to use a short-form of the wanted text (see Wikipedia:TPT#Further use) should also have been explicitly stated in my suggestion. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge into Wikipedia:Talk page or Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.

The information about how to order templates on the page is useful. The (unwritten) section on TOCs is pointless; TOCs are generated automatically. The (unwritten) section on discussion sections would, if it existing, duplicate information already in Wikipedia:Talk page or Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.

In short, we don't need yet another policy/guideline about talk pages; we need to have information in one place (within reason). The ordering of talk page templates isn't covered elsewhere, I think, but in itself doesn't justify a separate policy (or, more likely, guideline). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a section "Layout" in Wikipedia:Talk page but I think a policy similar to WP:LAYOUT would be better. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Peer review by ChyranandChloe

I've seen project banners below {{ArticleHistory}},[1] it is certainly reasonable to place {{FAQ}} below guideline banners (e.g. {{Notaforum}}), {{oldprodfull}} can often be encompassed by {{ArticleHistory}} as it documents past events, {{OnThisDay}} is grouped with {{ArticleHistory}} to be grouped closer to the "article appeared on the main page" notice, and {{Maintained}} which is considered a notice different than who provide talk page behavioral guidelines is not listed.

This would be a guideline rather than a policy, unless you are planning on going beyond "advising" editors. Either of which must document "actual good practices" (WP:PAG). Rationale constitutes "good practices", however many proposals fail to establish that it is an "actual" practice. WP:MOS styles may be verified (WP:V) with MLA, APA, Chicago, so on. WP:LAYOUT, however, is subjective. The "actual" order from which the guideline documents is based on what editors actually use. Currently WP:LAYOUT is experimenting with random sampling, which removes the decision from the systematic biases expressed by editors though their subjective selection of articles. Examples of these reports are available at [2] and [3]. "Gray zones" where two or more practices are both "good" and "actual", and from which neutrality (WP:NPOV) entails that both be listed, has yet to be determined. We might be able to get away with "actual" since no previous guideline appears to have been established, and as long as no dispute over the order occurs.

WP:CREEP. Talk page templates and banners are often presented in a reasonable, stable, order. Furthermore the order and templates used is rarely a disputed. A "Help" page may be more effective in teaching new editors how to add and order templates. If the warrant is not adequately established, then enforcement will be sparse. Without enforcement the guideline is cumbersome reading. In my opinion the current guideline is too detailed, and similar items should be grouped. Remember that even though the order of the standard appendices is well established in WP:LAYOUT, it is only enforced 70% of the time (±7.77% with 95% CI) when applicable. What is the scope do you intend this guideline to be applied? This looks like an independent guideline, however it can be a part of WP:LAYOUT or WP:TPG.

Prose needs to be equivalent or better than FA articles, your words will be quoted, and original intent must be clear. I've made some amends, in this diff.[4] You can revert if you disagree. Never make statements redundant, it should be clear the first time. For example, "Generally", "most", and "should" in the previous version refer to the same thing. "or from most important[...]" this should be established in the first clause. "{{talkheader}} at the top and {{archives}} at the very bottom" is confusing—"at the very bottom" can imply the very bottom the article, this should be within the list. Here's my peer review, I hope it help. ChyranandChloe (talk) 00:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I think (but its hard to gauge what others think, so take what I say with a grain of salt), that this is simply a proposal to identify things that we should suggest (and never move beyond mere suggestion), and things that can be systematized. I originally wanted (I'm not the originator of this discussion however, altought I started another discussion and merged it with this one) to have a bot shove things in {{WPBS}}, which should be uncontroversial, but if we're having a bot tidy up talk pages (which can be have 5-6 unshelled banners), we might as well take the opportunity to see what other kind of tidying up would be uncontroversial and appreciated. So far I think there is consensus for three "enforcable" guidelines. 1) Shoving banners in {{WPBS}} when there are too many banners, 2) placing {{talkheader}} and variants at the very top of the page, and 3) placing the archives at the very bottom of banner section.

This page could eventually serve as a centralized discussion page for talk page templates, etc... AKA talk about what can be incorporated into macrotemplates (shoving {{OnThisDay}} into {{articlehistory}} for example) and whatnots. It would be IMO wrong and incredibly WP:CREEPY to have this as part of an actual style guide (WP:MOSTALKLAYOUT), but there are certainly issues about the layout of talk pages which needs to be discussed, and these discussions fall outside the scope of WP:TALK. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Delete {{talkheader}}

As above. It's worthless. Stifle (talk) 08:47, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean in general? You are not discussinmg this here. Talkheader was proposed for deletion and survived. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. It might be boilerplate, but it's boilerplate which saves significant work in the long-term by giving IPs and new users some hints on how to act. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The consensus is clear that talkheader should be placed in those pages that there are might be comments by newcomers. Not all pages. So a LAYOUT guideline has to include it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

How about removing it if the only stuff on the page is other templates? --NE2 14:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me (unless the article was newly created). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 15:08, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes I agree but this discussion has to be done in Template talk:Talkheader. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

What about categories?

Where should categories, for example Category:Date of birth missing, be placed? I am usually adding them after the banners but this puts them in the middle of the talk page usually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

That should be handled by the biography banner, not by manual placement of the category. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Date of birth missing is not handled by the biography banner. It is placed in the talk page as an administrative category manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but this should be handled by the banner, IMO. But for categories in general, they should probably all be added after the last banner. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I rewrote the categories section to note that they are normally added by the templates, and also added a section for placement of interwikis - feel free to tweak it (or wholesale revert it, if you disagree). =) ···「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk to Dinoguy1000} 17:09, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Right now there exist categories that are not added by templates. This is the reality. This may change and I agree that we have to do something about it, bu here we can only handle the given reality. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• I can see why you want the Cats before the talk, but they are so diligently kept at the end of articles (usually just before the interlang lks) that there will be confusion. How about an collapsing "envelope" template (re-expand to see a list of the enveloped Cats, to aid in recognizing that the latest-added stray Cat has become buried) at the end of the lead section, that can handle any cat not built into another template, e.g.

  {{CatEnvelope|Date of birth missing|Date of death missing| {{paramedCat|Catname|param2|param2}}}}

At least when empty, it should display

Categories not yet provided by other templates should be placed here inside the {{envelope}} template.

Maybe it should only be used when there is a Cat needed that currently lacks a specific carrying template, or if a loose Cat has previously been placed in the (temporarily) last section of that particular tk pg: the habit of putting Cats at the end of non-talk pages is so strong that IMO even experienced editors are likely to make that mistake, once, on talk pages, and IMO there should be a remedy to ameliorate the same page repeatedly needing to have the latest misplaced Cat hunted down.
--Jerzy•t 16:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright, let's see what is appropriate for bot maintenance.

Here's what I think are uncontroversial and uncreepy measures, and which are good enough to warrant an edit.

• {{skiptotoc}}: {{skiptotoc}} is, when present, always at the top.
• {{WPBS}}: When 2–5 things can be shoved in {{WPBS}}, they're all shoved in {{WPBS}}. (Trigger at 3)
• {{WPB}}: When 6+ things can be shoved in {{WPB}}, they're all shoved in {{WPB}}. (Trigger)
• {{WP Biography}} should be the first of the WikiProjects because of the special considerations for BLPs and so on.
• {{ArticleHistory}}: When 2+ things can be shoved in {{ArticleHistory}}, they're all shoved in {{ArticleHistory}}. (Trigger)
• {{talkheader}}: {{talkheader}} should not be present on >1 month old pages without any discussions.
• Archives: {{archives}}/{{archivebox}}/and so on should be removed if {{talkheader}} is present. (Trigger)
• Categories: Categories should be placed immediately after the banners.
• The banner section should be clean of discussions, so these would be placed in a generic "Discussion" section following the banner.

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 12:39, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

May I suggest

• {{skiptotoc}} can be omitted in many cases. When the project banners are in a collapsed shell and {{ArticleHistory}} is present the TOC should be visible.
• {{WPBS}}: As discussed and agreed upon elsewhere in many places, many the the template talk page and the talk page for {{WPB}}, more than 6 project banners go into a collapsed shell.
• {{WP Biography}} can be anywhere in the shell as the |living= no longer forces the {{BLP}} in a shell but |blp= is needed.

Does any of that make sense as legitimate variants?

JimCubb (talk) 21:54, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Updated my list accordingly. I left the blp thing out for now because I don't really understand how it works for the moment. We should ask the community if their is consensus for this sort of bot-work in the near-future so bot coders can work their magic, and see how the rules hold up in the bot trials. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:53, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

If the subject of the article is a living person, |living= in {{WP Biography}} puts the {{BLP}} verbiage immediately above {{WP Biography}}. If there is only one other project banner on the talk page of an article about a living person, {{WP Biography}} should go first. If there are more than two project banners on the page, the banners will be placed within a shell and the |living= in {{WP Biography}} does not put the {{BLP}} verbiage above the shell. Either the shell parameter, |blp= or the {{blp}} must be used for the {{BLP}} to be visible.

Therefore, if the article is about a living person and there is only one project banner on the talk page other than the {{WP Biography}}, then the {{WP Biography}} must be placed above the other one. If there are more than two project banners on a page the banners need not be in any particular order although some logical order may be desireable on pages with a large number of banners so that the most relevant are at the top with the shell is expanded. (The knock-down, drag-out brawl reasoned discussion over relative relevancy between the members of the projects that are involved may not be fun to watch.)

Does that help at all?

JimCubb (talk) 19:32, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Disagree with most

Having maintained talk pages on most FAs and FFAs for several years, there's not much I agree with on this page, so I oppose it becoming a guideline. Besides that a number of the items aren't needed or can be smalled after everything else, the page looks very prescriptive in spite of the disclaimer, and talk page format shouldn't be dictated by anyone except the users of that talk page. Skipto can most often be killed as useless (if the page is built correctly), WP1 can be put inside banners or smalled, maintained by can be smalled and go under archives, so can todo, I dislike and remove archives from talk headers on pages I author and want the archive box so archives ca be labeled, the list duplicates items that are built into articlehistory, and so on. This page is instruction creep, and not needed. There's much written here that disagrees with practice. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:01, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Alright we've trimmed the long enumerations of various template in favour of the general idea. This should be more agreeable now.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:24, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course, all banners aren't supposed to be there. This is a guide where to put a banner if needed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

It's still just off, and unnecessary. It's recommending WPBS, but leaving out {{WikiProjectBanners}}, into which *all* of that other unnecessary talk page crap can be dumped. And it's still saying articlehistory is used when there are 2 or more elments: not so. GimmeBot automatically converts all FACs to articlehistory, even if there is only one element. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:18, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, well if that's current practice to shove stuff in ArticleHistory even if there's only 1 thing that would go in it, I see no reason to change that. And as far as the WPBS vs WPB goes, which projects tagged it and what are their assessment/importance ratings are definetaly not things that should be hidden (at least by default). I know I would much rather have them displayed then not, especially when I'm doing assessment runs. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

As someone who has had to update many, many ArticleHistorys since GimmeBot stopped doing GA, I've notice that the talk pages that have three or more WikiProject banners are cluttered and much harder to navigate. I usually insert {{WPBS}} in those cases. By the way, you can still see the class rating of the talk banners when you use {{WPBS}}; see for example Talk:List of Medal of Honor recipients (Veracruz). I agree with much of what Sandy says, although I usually collapse to-do instead of "small" it. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

This kind of disagreements can be included in the guideline. We can create different variations depending on the banners needed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

GA and VA

{{GA}} and {{VA}} are not really project banners, but they're sort of like them. I think they should go between 5 and 6. I strongly support having a set order as a guideline, by the way. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Pushing WPBio/BLP banner up

When I edit biography pages (currently working my way through the 200,000+ automatically-assessed bio pages), I generally move {{WPBiography}} up as close to the top as possible if the article is a BLP, to make sure that the BLP banner is visible to most users even if they do not bother to scroll down. Other than that, I don't see much value in specifying a particular order, so long as it stays stable. Since the articles I'm editing in this case are frequently unsourced, unmaintained, orphaned biographies of little-known, barely-notable-if-even-that professional soccer players, I don't see much benefit in the template cruft that seems to accumulate, particularly {{WPBS}}. WP has more than enough "user interface" as it is. 121a0012 (talk) 06:06, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this policy will clear out things about this for example. It will make it official. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

My sympathies are with 121a0012 who seems to be running into the same interesting situation as I. (I have been and am working on Category:Biography articles without listas parameter that is down to barely under 50,000 pages.)

I do not see much hope for reducing the number of project banners. The soccer players will have Biog, Football, country of origin and country of current team banners. Most of those articles are extremely short so that even one of the banners takes more vertical space than the article. This is where {{WPBS}} is helpful. It works even better when the |collapsed= parameter is set to yes.

What would help even more would be for the {{talkheader}} to be smaller. I do not see a high probability of that happening.

For the articles that 121a0012 and I see all the time the {{skiptotoc}} is a joke. There are no comments on the page so there is no TOC.

What I have been doing, aside from adding the |listas= value and the same value in the {{DEFAULTSORT}} on the article page, is to make certain that |living= has a value, make certain that the {{blp}} is above all banners if it is applicable, put the history below the project banners and put the project banners into the smallest shell I can rationalize. (The suggested rule-of-thumb is a shell for more than two banners and a collapsed shell for more than five. Your preferences may differ.)

A general guideline to the layout of a Talk page is probably a good thing if it allows for variations.

JimCubb (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Not all main-namespace pages are articles

For example, Dab pages famously are not articles, and other near-Dab species like {{hndis}} and {{SIA}} exist. The "switch" in the markup should treat "article" as the default value (applicable for null "non-art" param) when "ns:1" applies, but (for that namespace only) we should provide a second-level switch that will substitute, e.g. (in the "non-art:dab" case) "disambiguation page" in place of "article". I haven't yet done the research of coming up with a reasonably complete list of non-article main-namespace page types, but i think i could install the enhancement if there is no objection.
--Jerzy•t 16:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• In the case that brought me here, i simply subst'ed the template onto the talk page, and did a second edit to it to patch the resulting editable markup to my situation. I was interested to note that i never mentioned the most common type of non-article page: the redirect! I was converting an unacceptable Dab to an Rdr (without prejudice to later reversion if the otherwise unlinked red-lk bio title eventually becomes a bio whose subject has demonstrable notability) so i splurged, converting

article

to

navigational (dab/redirect) page

So here's my expanded (but still incomplete) list:

redirect page

disambiguation page

set-index article

human-name disambiguation page

navigational page

(My thot is that "navigational page" is an appropriate catchall for the mutable individual cases, where Dab/Rdr will probably be the most frequent.)

Is it worth providing a lk for users inexperienced enuf to read the template, pointing to a WP-namespace page discussing the function of pgs in the corresponding namespace?
--Jerzy•t 17:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

You forgot pseudo-namespaceses. -- œ^™ 09:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

How is this related to talk page layout?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:58, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• It's probably more related to {{talk header}}, but it has the sort of diffuse relationship here that you should expect when "brainstorming" is declared. There's a stimulating discussion going on, and probably someone less structured than you aspire to be is mulling it over and preparing to make more use of what i've said than i am willing to. I'm done with it. (Note i've found a solution that meets my needs.) But i suggest you wait for a consensus before you move it to VP, or the template's talk page, or speedy-archive it.
  Those still in this discussion may also, when the abstract page design is fixed, want to consider {{Dab-talkheader}} for the implementation suggestions it provides.
  --Jerzy•t 21:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  

An example of messed up article

Check this one. Two calm talks, skip to script in the middle of calm talk and start a new discussion, 3 AfDs and more.

I think we need a rule: 3 or more Afd/prod tags etc. then replace with article milestones. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:23, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Isn't that covered by the 2+ things in {{Articlehistory}}?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:22, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Ease of use idea: Basic Templates For Talk Page Layout

The best part of Wikipedia is the respect you achieve over time by the quality of your posts. Many link builders and over-night users simply miss out totally on the pleasure of being part of the sharing education. They rush off to edit or add something and vanish. Now IF there were templates (per example on or via: Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines) this would help such a user "get into the bath" so to speak. The TALK template would include some basic Wiki markup with comment tags as to their use. - Happy to work on this with a few others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dutchbeefy (talk • contribs) 17:51, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Place archiving bot trigger above talk header template

Please place archiving bot trigger above talk header template.

If it's placed below this it screws up the talk page format and leaves a big ugly empty space often in between other templates.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 18:34, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Which archiving bot trigger? There are several. Also, please give examples of pages where this is a demonstrable problem. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:23, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

An example. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

What was broken about the previous version that required {{User:MiszaBot/config}} to be moved to the top? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Cirt? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it should be at the top of the talk page, and not the bottom. — Cirt (talk) 17:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

@Cirt: Agree with who? Nobody (other than yourself) has said that {{User:MiszaBot/config}} should be moved to the top of the talk page. Your edit (linked by Magioladitis above) didn't move the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} from the bottom of the talk page, it moved it from the bottom of the first section - with the vague edit summary "talk page formatting". What I don't understand is why it is a problem at the bottom of the first section. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

It creates ugly odd spacing, especially if placed in between other project tags. — Cirt (talk) 17:52, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

But it wasn't in between other project tags. It was right at the bottom of the lead section; and while there was a 30px gap between the {{Find sources notice|Sian Breckin}} and the TOC, that gap was no larger than the 30px gap that you have caused above the {{Talk header}} and is certainly no uglier. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposal

It seems that {{afd-merged-from}} should be in group #7 (with "article history" banners) while {{merged-from}} and {{merged-to}} should be in #14 (with {{Split from}} and {{Split to}}). What do others think? GoingBatty (talk) 00:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

GoingBatty I agree. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

rev 9815 AWB supports it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:58, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

DYK talk

Since the {{DYK talk}} is used at so many talk pages (63,401), it should defenitly be added somewhere on the WP:TPL-list. Right? -(t) Josve05a (c) 00:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I consider these to fall within 7 'Any "article history" banner'. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: Ping! Do you agree that this would be classified as a #7? In that case, If you please could add it to the AWB program? :-) -(t) Josve05a (c) 11:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Josve05a I agree. I would like to wait a few days before implementing so more editors can read the discussion and express their opinion. GoingBatty what do you think? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:19, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with #7, based on Template:Article history/doc. GoingBatty (talk) 13:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

(Off topic...Magioladitis {{Oldhwypeerreview}} should be placed at the same place as normal olrpeerreviews, rigt?) -(t) Josve05a (c) 12:43, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Josve05a True but I don't want to do his case-by-case. It is time consuming. You are welcome to create full lists and save me some time :) I think this template could be deleted and replaced by normal olrpeerreviews. It has very few transclusions and categorising does not bring many. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Magioladitis: I will collect all of these templates I can find and then give them all togheter. :-) -(t) Josve05a (c) 12:51, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

rev 9816 support for {{DYK talk}}. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:36, 22 December 2013 (UTC)