Refactoring talk pages
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(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes. |
See also: Clogged talk pages and Talk page noise
Refactoring talk pages is a means of structuring them with the purposes of
- making them more readable and useful to future people who read the talk page later
- making them less dry (not because you didn't like or disagreed with the content they were bearing),
- making browsing archives more useful and less time-consuming.
This is especially useful when the volume of talking is large, but may occasionally also be useful in small discussions.
Such activity may include:
- Renaming dry headlines.
- Splitting a discussion in two, either on the same level in a subsection, depending in scope.
- Removing talk page noise.
- Not editing other peoples' comments. If a comment needs to belong partly to one section and partly toanother section, splitting it is acceptable.
Example 1
[edit]Was:
[edit]Dogs
[edit]- Dogs are barking, and it's raining. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Now:
[edit]Dogs
[edit]- Dogs are barking,
and it's raining.--Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)- Split by topic for a reasonable discussion. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Weather
[edit]Dogs are barking, andit's raining. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)- Split by topic for a reasonable discussion. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Example 2
[edit]Was:
[edit]Your recent edit
[edit]You need to use a spell checker, I did some proofreading and corrected spelling. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Now:
[edit]Suggestion to use a spell checker (was: Your recent edit)
[edit]- Title edited for readability. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
You need to use a spell checker, I did some proofreading and corrected spelling. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)