Help:Using Discussion

General

Each page or article has an associated "Talk" page which is accessed through the "discussion" tab at the top of the page.

The main purpose of these talk/discussion pages is to allow people reviewing the page to make comments or suggestions without modifying or disrupting the existing content of the main article. This is especially useful in the case of "protected" pages. A protected page can only be edited by an administrator; however, the associated Talk page can still be added to, so comment can still be made.

Mostly, editing the Talk page is just like changing a "regular" page, but there a few differences.

Headings

When you edit a Talk page, you will see a tab with a "+" symbol at the top of the page. It is not immediately obvious what this is for, but it allows you to create a new heading to go along with your comments. These headings work very much like the headings you might use in the main article, but there is no need for the Talk headings to match those used in the article.

Try to avoid creating a new heading if there is an existing topic on your subject; it is probably better just to add to the existing discussion in such cases.

Signatures

If several people are making comments and replies, then the Talk page can become very confusing to read! But the Talk page has a solution - signatures! If you type in ~~~~ after your comment then the wiki will sign and date your remarks. For example, typing:

I just wanted to make this comment. -- ~~~~

will appear as:

I just wanted to make this comment. -- UserName 16:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The two dashes in the example are optional - they just help space things out. Note that signatures will not work in the main article.