Template:Talk header/doc: Difference between revisions

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Talk header. It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is used on approximately 725,000 pages, or roughly 1% of all pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template should not be substituted.

This template should be used only when a talk page requires it. There is no need to add this template to every talk page. Do not create a talk page that contains only this template.

This template uses TemplateStyles: Template:Talk header/styles.css

This template is a signpost. It may be used on talk pages to attract commentary from inexperienced editors, or where there are high levels of debate from everyone. It provides:

• Intro – a short introduction and appropriate links for newcomers
• Policies – a reminder of important policies for experienced Wikipedians
• Find sources links – a set of links to aid in finding reliable sources for the article topic
• Archives – a list of links to the current talk page's archives, and a search box to search them

Usage

Basic

{{Talk header}}

To add this template to a talk page, just open an edit of the talk page, and put {{Talk header}} at the top of the page.

By convention, this template goes at the very top of the talk page, above WikiProject templates and other talk-page banners. However, this is not an absolute rule, and editors should use common sense when deciding its placement. See also: WP:Talk page layout § Lead (bannerspace).

For more information on this topic, see the talk page for this template, including the talk archives and the TfD logs.

Parameters

Full syntax – Vertical

Horizontal

{{talk header |bottom= |disclaimer= |custom_header= |wp= |display_title= |arpol= |sc1= |sc2= |sc3= |sc4= |sc5= |demospace= |hide_find_sources= |search= |search_term1= |search_term2= |search-domain= |noarchive= |age= |bot= |units= |minthreadsleft= }}

Hiding the template

A registered user who prefers not to see this template on any talk page, may hide it from view. Note that this will hide page archive links and the archive search box as well if they are configured to be shown through this template. You'll need to have a named account to do this.

1. Edit your user style page at Special:Mypage/common.css.
2. Add a line: #talkheader {display:none;}
3. Save the change.
4. Bypass your cache.

Portions of the template may be hidden for all viewers using a template parameter: see here to hide the "find sources" links; see here to hide the archive links.

Parts of the header

This section describes the different parts of the header. Each subsection below corresponds to one of the four main areas of functionality listed in the bullet items at the top, and explains which parameters are available to modify their appearance.

Intro and newcomer links

Basic tips for newcomers are boxed with a white background and appear top left, and includes starting a new section, using tildes to sign their posts, and how to get help.

Article policies

In the article namespace only, a box of "Article policies" is included by default.

In non-article namespaces, the "Article policies" box can be added via |arpol=yes. For example:

{{talk header|arpol=yes|noarchive=yes|search=yes|User:$1|User:$2}}

Note: |arpol=no is an invalid setting, and has no effect on header display in any namespace. The article policies may be suppressed by adding #talkheader .talkheader-policies{display:none} to your common.css.

"Find sources" links

For article Talk pages, a set of "find sources" links appears by default in the Talk header box. The default links correspond to the output of Template:Find sources; see Talk:Europe for an example. These links appear after the initial article policies and links for newcomers, and above the archiving section. For the article Europe, it looks like this:

Background

There are several flavors of "find sources" links (medical, video, general) targeted to different search domains. The flavor of "find sources" links displayed in the Talk header depends on WikiProject membership of the article and may correspond to one of these:

• {{find medical sources}} – for articles in the medical search domain
• {{find video game sources}} – for articles in the video game search domain
• {{find general sources}} – the default, for everything else, is the general domain.

The default search domain is "general", which is the large majority of all Talk pages, and displays the links found in template {{find general sources}}. The search domain is determined automatically by the template, depending on the presence of the corresponding WikiProject. If an article belongs to WikiProject Medicine, it is in the medical search domain by default; if it belongs to WikiProject Video games, it is in the video game search domain by default. (If it is in both, then the highest domain in the list above is chosen; i.e, 'medical'.)

For the page Talk:Giardiasis, which belongs to WP:WikiProject Medicine, it looks like this:

Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL

You can modify the nature of the source links displayed by hiding the links, modifying the query terms, or by modifying the search domain.

Hiding the links

By default, these links do not appear outside of Talk space.

Within article Talk space, the "find sources" links may be suppressed by setting parameter |hide_find_sources=yes.

Modifying the "find sources" query terms

The find sources links use the article title by default as the search term and forms an "exact search" (or "double-quoted query")^[n] from the title. If the article title contains parenthetical disambiguation portion, this is appended after the exact search query term, as an additional, unquoted phrase.

In place of the default, the query terms may be specified by using |search_term= (alias: |search_term1=) to specify the exact search string. Parameter |search_term2= may be added to specify additional, unquoted query terms, as many as desired.

Search domain override

The default domain chosen by automatic WikiProject detection can be overridden using param |search-domain=:

• |search-domain=medical – use medical as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: med)
• |search-domain=video game – use video games as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: video, and vg))
• |search-domain=general – use general as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: gen)

The parameter alias |domain= may be used instead; thus, |domain=med means the same thing as |search-domain=medical.

Archives

Links to Talk page archives and an archive search box are displayed automatically at the bottom of this template when used on a talk page that has archives that are named in the standard way. A link to the archive index is also displayed if it is named "/Archive index". If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they exist but have non-standard names, no archive links will be displayed.

The parameter |noarchive=yes may be used to suppress the archive links and search box.

Links to archives

If present, a link to the archive index, and links to archives are displayed. They look like this (example shown is for Talk:Europe):

Auto-archiving period 180 days  Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

The bot notice containing the text "Auto-archiving period" at the right is controlled by the four related parameters: |bot=, |age=, |units=, and |minthreadsleft=.

Bot notice

If the page is auto-archived by a bot, the bot notice appears to the right of the archive index links, as in the example shown above.

The following parameters contribute to a small notification that the talk page is archived by a bot (typically by Lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III). The template will include a tooltip informing readers of the amount of time before discussions are archived. This tooltip will not be shown if there are no archives to be listed.

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=30|units=days}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 30 days. (See #Examples.)

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=6|units=months|minthreadsleft=4}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 6 months, as long as at least 4 sections remain. (See #Examples.)

These parameters are for informational purposes, not to actually set up archiving. Please see WP:AUTOARCHIVE for instructions. For an alternative template to inform readers of automatic archiving settings, see {{Archives}}.

|bot= The bot used to archive the page, unwikilinked.

|age= Enter a number to convey the amount of time the bot is set to wait for until archiving a discussion as expressed as a number of time units, as set by the units parameter.

|units= Enter a string to convey the unit the age parameter refers to. Useful examples include days, month, months etc

|minthreadsleft= The amount of threads the bot will leave. The tooltip will include a message telling the reader that after minthreadsleft threads, threads older than age will be archived.

Search box

The archive search box may be used to search the Talk page archives. If present, the search box appears below the Archiving links, and is the last element to appear:

In this working example, entering search terms searches the talk page archives of the article Europe.

Testing issues

Find sources testing

For testing and demonstration purposes, this template can take a parameter named demospace which enables testing of the find sources opt-out parameter |hide_find_sources= from other namespaces.

• If demospace has the value main or the value 1 it returns the findsources text it would normally return when transcluded from mainspace.
• It demospace any other value such as the name of some other namespace it returns the text it would if transcluded outside of mainspace.
• If the parameter is empty or undefined, the actual page type determines the result.

The dynamic features of WikiProject autodetection and search domain override depend on the article title where it appears, and therefore cannot be tested in the normal way. The testcases page provides an explanation of how to test these features using Special:ExpandTemplates with the ContextTitle enabled, or by using in situ testing.

Examples

Archiving notice

The following parameters contribute to a small notification that the talk page is archived by a bot (typically by Lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III). The template will include a tooltip informing readers of the amount of time before discussions are archived. This tooltip will not be shown if there are no archives to be listed.

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=30|units=days}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 30 days.

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=6|units=months|minthreadsleft=4}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 6 months, as long as at least 4 sections remain.

TemplateData

Tracking categories

• Category:Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters (0)

See also

• {{New discussion}}
• {{Not a forum}}
• {{Portal talk}}
• {{Skip to talk}}
• {{WikiProject banner shell}}
• Wikipedia:Template index/Talk namespace
• Wikipedia:Template index/User talk namespace
• MediaWiki:Talkpagetext

Notes