User:Alice/Kitchen/Using User Talk pages

Wikivoyagers that create their own user accounts have the facility of having an associated User Talk page for discussing that particular editor's interactions with Wikivoyage. User Talk pages are not chat boards; they're for co-ordinating editorial decisions, suggesting new ideas and policy articles that should be considered, and generally collaborating on improving Wikivoyage.

It can help to use User Talk pages rather than Article Discussion pages for those quick and ephemeral questions and explanations that don't need to be archived for ever or are more diplomatically raised on a one-to-one basis and to hammer out differences.

Talk page formatting
You can get to the User Talk page for a particular user by clicking on the discussion tab when reading that User's page.

You edit User Talk pages just like editing any other page in Wikivoyage; see how to edit a page for instructions. When using talk pages, add new topics at the bottom of the page.

If there are already conversations going on on that page, it can help to add a new heading. You can either click on the  [Add topic ]  button next to the "edit" tab if it's there, or create the heading manually like this:

==Names in Chinese==

...so that there's a visual distinction between topics of discussion.

Don't forget that User Talk pages are publicly accessible and anyone can read them.

Unless the User Talk page has been specially protected, it's possible for other users, registered or unregistered, to edit, change, delete, move, overwrite, add to, or otherwise mess around with User Talk pages or subpages. It's generally considered bad form to remove or alter any comments other than your own unless invited by the user that User Talk page belongs to.

It's important to remember that while User Talk pages and subpages don't need to follow the style guidelines for Wikivoyage articles -- after all, they are for personal organisation and communication -- all content must be under our copyleft.

Sign!
You should sign your posts on User Talk pages, so people know who they're talking to. Just enter four tildes at the end of your comments (" ~ "), and it will turn into a signature with your user name, time and date.

Indentation
Responses to other people's talk should be indented. You can use a colon (" : ") at the beginning of a paragraph to indent that paragraph. Responses to responses should be indented twice (two colons); responses to responses to responses get indented three times and so on. After a while, the increasing indentation will make the column of writing get too narrow - so you can go back to using no colon, with successive contributors each continuing to increment the indentation of their posts as before.

Etiquette
There are some points of etiquette in using User Talk pages that have built up over the years. Here are a few:


 * Avoid abuse of User Talk pages either by labelling or personally attacking Wikivoyage users - especially the user whose talk page you are writing on!
 * Reply on the User Talk page that a question was posed or a comment made rather than going to the User Talk page of the user that posed the question or made the comment to avoid talk fragmentation (that user should be "watching" the page where they posted!)
 * Unlike everything else in Wikivoyage, it's considered bad form to change someone else's posts on a talk page — even to correct spelling or grammar. The exception is to delete or redact gross indecency or personal attacks or breaches of privacy.
 * It's usually perfectly OK, though, to change something you wrote on a talk page, for any reason. If you made spelling or grammatical errors, feel free to change them.
 * If, in the heat of the moment, you said something you regret, go ahead and change that, too.
 * And, ForgiveAndForget when someone changes a nasty comment to something more civil and productive.
 * As an exception, it's impolite to remove a comment if someone's responded to it. It makes them look ridiculous!
 * In general, conversations aren't deleted from talk pages but are instead archived when they are old or no longer relevant. To archive discussions simply create a new page such as User talk:Mypage/Archive and copy the old discussions to it.


 * It's usually considered acceptable to remove something from your own User Talk page if you consider it embarrassing or harassing - after all User Talk pages are for communication and once the User has read it, it may not need to be kept for "pillory purposes".


 * It's best to wait until the page has grown quite long before archiving and such archives should always be clearly linked from the principal talk page, so that everything is easy to find. Archives should not be edited.

Blocking
Sometimes users behave badly and they are blocked from editing all pages for a varying time.

So that the blocked user can defend himself against allegations, his own User Talk Page is normally always exempt from this (otherwise) site-wide block.

(In the case that this natural justice privilege is egregiously abused, illicit contributions may still be oversighted or censored. If, despite warnings to desist, the user continues to abuse the privilege of having a User Talk page to the point that continual oversight becomes either impractical or too onerous a task, then, and only as an unusual last resort, his own User Talk Page may be blocked for a period of up to three calendar months. Concurrent e-mail disabling is not appropriate unless more than a dozen Wikivoyage registered users complain of the abuse of the e-mail-a-user facility since most modern e-mail systems have the choice of marking e-mails from a particular e-mail address as unwanted or "spam")

Travellers' pub
If you have something to discuss about Wikivoyage as a whole, the Travellers' pub is a good place to put your comments. You can also add a talk-page style note to the Logbook by clicking on "Today's Log" in the left-hand nav bar.

Requests for comment
If you think an issue needs more attention, you can add it to the requests for comment page to get more attention on it.

Rants
If you must rant, there are endless venues to do so on the internet. While everyone is entitled to a good one now and then, off topic rants on User Talk pages may be deleted by the User or by admins.