Tesseract:Talk page
Talk pages are used for communication between editors in a wiki. There are two kinds of talk pages — standard talk pages, such as the ones used to discuss an article, a template, a category, etc., while user talk pages are used to communicate with other users or leave them messages.
Every page has an associated talk page, except pages in the Special: namespace. If nobody has ever posted on a talk page, then the link will be red. You can still discuss the page - you will just be the first person to edit the talk page.
Accessing a talk page[edit source]
To access a talk page, look for a tab labelled Talk, Discussion or Discuss this page. These links will be found either at the top of the page or on the left hand side (near Edit this page).
The namespace of a talk page is Talk: with the page's title after the namepace. If the main page has a prefix then talk is added after this prefix.
If someone leaves a message on your talk page, the alert "You have new messages" is automatically displayed on all pages you view, even on other wikis, until you view your user talk page.
Using talk pages[edit source]
You should sign and date your contributions on all talk pages by typing four tildes: (~~~~), which will yield something like this: Example 06:01, July 5 2024 (UTC).
The "Post a comment" feature (the small "+" sign on a separate tab, at the top of a talk page) allows you to start a new section without needing to edit the whole page. The section header becomes the edit summary at the time you save the page, so there is no edit summary displayed when you use this feature.
Formatting[edit source]
If you are the first to post a comment, you don't have to do anything. However, after this, it is recommended you use colons (':') at the start of your comment. For example:
How's the soup? --John :It's great!! --Jane ::Not too bad... --George :::I made it myself! --John I think the soup-discussion should be moved to Talk:Soup... --Jane :I tend to disagree. --George
Doing so will produce this:
How's the soup? --John
- It's great!! --Jane
- Not too bad... --George
- I made it myself! --John
- Not too bad... --George
I think the soup-discussion should be moved to Talk:Soup... --Jane
- I tend to disagree. --George