Help:Talk pages

Every page in this wiki apart from special pages has a talk page or discussion page associated with it. These are used to communicate with other users.

Each user has a talk pages in the User_talk namespace, called User_talk:username. This provides a way of leaving messages for that user. Simply add your message to the user's talk page. Unless you are continuing an existing discussion, you should leave your message in a new section.

When someone else edits your talk page, a box appears at the top of every page you view with the message "You have new messages (last change)" . Clicking on "messages" will take you to your talk page. Clicking on "last change" will display a diff between your current talk page and the previous version. If several messages have been left since you last viewed your talk page, this diff will only show the most recent. Note that this feature will not work if you redirect your talk page to a name other than your username.

Other talk pages (i.e. not in the User_talk namespace) are for discussion of the associated page, image, category or template. Note that "this page" usually refers to the page with which the talk page is associated. References to the talk page itself should say "this talk page".

All contributions to talk pages should be signed by typing --~~~~, which will give the username of the editor and the time of the edit. Indenting of comments in a discussion using : is strongly encouraged as this helps readers to understand the flow of the discussion. If you are replying to a statement, you reply should have one more colon than the statement to which you are replying.