Pharmpedia:Talk page
From Pharmpedia
A talk page is a special Pharmpedia page containing discussion about the contents of its associated "subject" page. To view the talk page of an article, click on the discussion link somewhere on the border of the screen, depending on skin and other preferences set. (In the default skin or preferences set, the discussion link can be found at the top of the page, usually beside the edit button.) When you are in the talk page, clicking on project page or article will take you back to the main article.
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What is it used for?
On Pharmpedia, the purpose of a talk page is to help to improve the contents of the main page, from an encyclopedic point of view. Questions, challenges, excised text (due to truly egregious confusion or bias, for example), arguments relevant to changing the text, and commentary on the main page are all fair play.
The practice of "spamming" - posting similar messages to more than a few users' talk pages, often for the purpose of soliciting a certain action - is discouraged.
User talk pages
Your user page also has a talk page which has some special features. For one thing, there is a link to it in the header next to your name (if you use a "skin" other than the default it may be somewhere else). Also, if edits are made to it by others, the text You have new messages will appear at the top of the page. These pages can be used for occasional personal communication among users; but note that these pages are public. If you want to communicate privately, use e-mail.
To write in another user's talk page, click the Discuss this page link on your sidebar when you view the user page (which you can do by clicking on a user's nickname). On the list of recent changes and on your watchlist, you can directly access a user's talk page by following the (Talk) link behind the user's name / IP address.
"Post a comment" feature
For editing a talk page, one can optionally use the "Post a comment" feature, but only for a new thread and for a reply to be put at the bottom of the last thread.
- For a new thread, fill in the "Subject/headline" box. Then the ‘edit’ summary is automatically the same as the new ‘Section’ header.
- For a reply to be put at the bottom of the last thread, do not fill in the "Subject/headline" box. In this case it is not possible to supply an edit summary. Instead, edit the previous thread.
When using "Post a comment", an edit conflict is impossible. However, in the case that you are not starting a new thread but replying to an existing one, your response may be appended to a newly created post that was added while you wrote yours. It is therefore generally recommended to use section editing to respond, and "Post a comment" to start new threads. If your comment is accidentally misplaced, just edit the page and move it.
Standards and conventions of writing and layout
A few community standards do apply to talk pages, these are not to be taken strictly as "rules" but were evolved by users to make the talk pages more useful and easier to read. Often the talk pages of controversial topics can be very heavily used.
- Sign your posts: To sign a post, type three tildes (~~~), and they will be replaced with your username after saving, like this: Pharma. Type four tildes (~~~~), and they will be replaced with your username and time stamp, like this: Pharma 03:44 May 7, 2005 (UTC). On Pharmpedia we recommend that you try to always Sign your posts on talk pages . You can also use a pseudonym, or just "--anon". Note, however, that anyone can check the history of the page to see who anonymously wrote on a talk page.
- Use indenting to keep the conversation straight: The first contributor is all the way to the left, the next person starts with one colon (:), the next person starts with two colons. Then, when the first contributor responds, they start at the left margin again, and the second and third persons continue to mark themselves with one and two colons respectively. In that way, who is saying what is clear. Other indentation systems are also widely used.
- Separate discussion topics: Put each new topic under a different headline (== Subject ==). The "Post a comment" feature accomplishes this automatically when you enter a subject line. The edit summary is automatically the same as this header. Thus every thread is a section. This allows section editing of the thread in question (see Pharmpedia:Sections). You can also use horizontal lines (----), although some users strongly dislike them.
- Proceed vertically: The further down the contribution to talk, the later it was made.
- Voting: Various pages invite you to vote on a topic. Using the posting conventions of this section, add your vote as a bullet (*) underneath the relevant topic and bold (''') your actual vote. Your vote will typically not carry much weight unless you include your rationale for the vote. Make sure to sign your post (~~~~), as described above.
- Feel free to ignore typographical conventions: Do as you please to make your points clear. The Manual of Style is for articles.
- Make links freely: Links to articles are as useful on talk pages as anywhere else, and links to non-existent articles can help get them onto the most wanted pages list.
- Don't misrepresent other people: As a rule, refrain from editing others' comments without their permission. Though it may appear helpful to correct typing errors, grammar, etc, please do not go out of your way to bring talk pages to publishing standards, since it's not terribly productive and will tend to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Don't edit someone's words to change their meaning. That means you should not remove personal attacks made by other users - rather, make a civil comment rebutting them. Editing or deleting your own words is up to you.
- Archive rather than delete: When a talk page's content has become extremely large or the discussion of the issue in hand has simply died down and no one has a reasonable chance of adding to it, create a new page. (See Pharmpedia:How to start a page and Pharmpedia:How to archive a Talk page for details.) Place the page in a talk or Pharmpedia talk namespace. Give it an explanatory name. Often people simply add "archive" to the original name. Explain on the archive page where the text you plan to archive will come from and provide a link. Cut the relevant content from the original page and paste it into the new page. Replace the text on the original page with a link to the archive. An alternative is to summarise the discussion and provide a link to the version with the full text.
- Summarize discussion (or refactor): After a discussion on a page has died down for several weeks or the discussion has become heated and long, you (if you can be smart and respectful at the same time) might replace the discussion with a summary of major points, as though you were (!) writing an encyclopedia article about the discussion. If the discussion entailed opposing arguments, present the arguments from an unbiased point of view. Where possible, distinguish the common ground from the points of contention. See Refactoring talk pages below.
- Keep to the topic: Not layout, but worth keeping in mind. Talk page discussions can be much more humorous and POV than the typical article,.
- Use UTC when referring to a time, e.g. the time of an edit or page move.
- When discussing the name of the page, cite the current name: if the page is moved afterwards, the Talk page is usually also moved, so then it would not be clear what you were talking about and people may think e.g. that you are suggesting to change the new name, while you were referring to the old one.
- See also Pharmpedia:Headings for use of headings on talk pages.
Example
This article is great. Pharma 18:20 May 07, 2005 (UTC)
- No it isn't! --fish
-
- Yes it is! --wojahowicz
- I was talking to Pharma! --fish
I like wojahowicz better. Pharma
-
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- Now, now. Miller
-
Need this more?
We need an article on Pharmacology more than we need this mess. --Alfred the butler
- Yeah, but what about Pharmaceutics? -- Comissioner gordon
Refactoring talk pages
According to Pharmpedia:editing policy, the notion of refactoring, in the context of a wiki, means basically cleaning up and reorganizing a page such that all the useful information on the page is preserved and made more accessible. It's relatively rare that one needs to entirely refactor a Pharmpedia article—usually, edits and additions are what is necessary.
The purpose of talk pages is to assist in creating better articles. Therefore, the purpose of refactoring talk page discussions is to help create good encyclopedia articles, at least in the long run. A short-run purpose is to channel a discussion in a useful direction, that is, to help aim it at the future time when it can be used in an encyclopedia article.
There are a number of talk or other discussion oriented pages which could use a bit of traditional Wiki refactoring. There's useful content there, sometimes, that can be transferred to the article itself. Sometimes large chunks of old talk pages can be completely wiped out with no harm done—feel free to do so, unless you think there's some value in preserving the discussion. In refactoring a talk page, one solid recommendation is to use the traditional wiki refactoring technique of adding a summary with whatever consensus we've arrived at the top, grouping separate discussion items together, and placing them towards the bottom
Reference
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