Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines

Proposed addition to WP:TALKCOND
This section has no guidance on how much to archive, or the method of archiving (date vs size). The proposed new second paragraph Special:Diff/1221314215/1222242991:


 * In mainspace article talk pages, archiving too aggressively can be controversial see this thread for example. Archive select threads that are stale and likely to remain so. Archive based on size, not date. Try not to archive the entire page, just enough to reduce size not eliminate it. You are permitted to delete posts by InternetArchiveBot, these posts take up a lot of space and are no longer needed.

-- Green  C  01:15, 5 May 2024 (UTC)


 * This is very much one person's opinion. The claim that aggressive archiving is controversial is disingenuous, since the controversy, as presented in the linked thread, is that you personally don't like archiving. The proposal here would represent a large change to the way people archive, and a change for the worse. The advice to archive selected threads is particularly bad, since this would have to be done manually. Dan Bloch (talk) 02:04, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Also I don't think "Try not to archive the entire page, just enough to reduce size not eliminate it" has consensus. There's nothing wrong with archiving ann entire page if the page calls for it (eg if everything on the page is stale, or if everything on the page is disruptive). Clearing a page is not "eliminating" it. Levivich (talk) 02:15, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll add that some things just don't require guidance, and I think that how much to archive and archiving by date versus size are such things. A mixture of common sense and local consensus (or, more precisely, lack of local objection) are usually enough to make things work OK. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There are also best practices and bad practices. If required I'll write an essay (in user space), if I ever get the time, they are often more effective anyway for changing how things are done. -- Green  C  23:57, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really. See the linked thread where others concurred. The wording for the guideline can be changed but something needs to be said. What normally happens is people enable one of the archive bots, which are based on date, and the bot clears most or the whole page. It's the bot algorithms which are controlling what is archived. I can never recall seeing a user carefully choosing threads to manually archive. Indeed such a thing would necessitate not using an archive bot - unless the bot had a "sticky thread" feature (that was used). But 99% of the time someone will enable an archive bot with a date-based algo and that's it. -- Green  C  23:51, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What normally happens is people enable one of the archive bots, which are based on date, and the bot clears most or the whole page. This is the system working as intended; basically the WP:EDITCONSENSUS on the various pages.  Also note, setting up archiving is discussed in detail at WP:ARCHIVE and the examples there use "minthreadsleft=5", so that's likely the most common configuration, not clearing the whole page. Dan Bloch (talk) 00:59, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Others concurred" is an incomplete description of the VPIL discussion. Levivich (talk) 01:57, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Strike me as WP:CREEP. It's easy enough to archive and then someone else can revert, and if you can't work out such a trivial matter there's something more seriously wrong with the dynamic than adding still more words to this guideline will fix.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:45, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Name posted as the singular comment
More than once, an IP (anon) editor has posted my name in a discussion without giving a reason for doing so. The latest: @ Talk:You (TV series). Am I being solicited to participate in the discussion? Am I only supposed to know there is a discussion? Whatever ... posting an editor's name, and only the name, as a "comment" or "reply" should be deletable without a WP:TPO justification. Pyxis Solitary  (yak yak). Ol' homo. 02:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Agreed. This is disruptive editing, maybe vandalism. Dan Bloch (talk) 18:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You could try posting a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot on their user talk page. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  19:53, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Enforcement of topic bans on talk pages
According to this policy, any person who is subject to a "topic ban" is forbidden to discuss that topic on any talk page.

The talk page guidelines don't mention this policy at all; should it be mentioned in this section? Jarble (talk) 20:51, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think it's sufficient for this page to cover general guidance for the vast majority of editors who don't have any editing restrictions. The guidance pages for editing restrictions can discuss their scope. isaacl (talk) 00:15, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Tagging with small text
Involved in a situation recently where there was someone effectively giving the appearance of !voting more than once, to which another editor struck through the bolded part of the !vote. I can see the reasoning behind it, but WP:DISCUSSAFD explicitly recommends self-strikethroughs so someone else striking it can cause confusion. (The only exception to "Striking out text with ... or or marking text as deleted with ... constitutes a change in meaning. It should be done only by the user who wrote it, or as otherwise provided in this talk page guideline." here seems to be the common WP:SOCKSTRIKE.) A method I have seen to address such !votes, as well as similar situations such as SPAs, is to write a small-text tag inline after the signature. Would it be worth formalising some guidance on that practice here? CMD (talk) 04:27, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Proposed enhancement to WP:MULTI
At WP:MULTI, I would like to enhance the sentence
 * Instead, start the discussion in one location and, if appropriate, advertise it elsewhere via a link.

so that it reads
 * Instead, start the discussion in one location and, if appropriate, advertise it elsewhere via a link; templates such as and  are available for this.

This is in response to. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 16:30, 9 July 2024 (UTC)