WikiIslam:Talk Pages
This page contains a summary of the general policies and guidelines concerning talk pages (accessible via the "discussion" tab).
Primary Points
- Participants should remain civil to one another.
- Discussions should be kept on the page they were initiated.
- Messages should be signed and properly indented.
- Talk pages are for improving articles, not debating.
Etiquette
To maintain a cooperative atmosphere on the site, it is required for all editors and administrators to maintain civility, not be unnecessarily aggressive and assume good faith while communicating with others; newcomers in particular. Edit summaries and log comments are also required to follow these rules.
Do not remove or alter another user's message (unless it clearly violates talk page guidelines), do not use profanities and do not use ad hominem or threats against another user or the site.
For continuity of discussion, comments should be kept on the same talk page where they were initiated. All new discussion topics should be given a relevant heading and created at the bottom of the page, below all previous discussions. Each new message should be signed and follow the rules concerning indentation.
You should avoid excessive emphasis and be concise; capital letters are considered shouting, and long, rambling messages or SMS language may be difficult to understand and will be ignored.
To maintain a collegial atmosphere between editors of different faiths and backgrounds, it is suggested to not make comments critical of other religious beliefs or the lack of belief in any religion. Depending on the situation comments containing hate speech or extreme views may be removed. Users may freely remove comments from their own talk pages.
Failure to comply with these guidelines may result in the offending messages being edited or removed or your user account being blocked from editing WikiIslam, depending on the severity of your actions.
Topics
The purpose of a talk page is to provide space for editors to discuss changes directly relating to its associated article or project page. WikiIslam is not a social networking site. All discussion should ultimately be directed solely toward the improvement of the website.
Acceptable topics for discussion include concerns directly relating to the page, such as inaccuracies, formatting, renaming, merging and suggestions for further improvement. They are not there for debating the content of the article or for general attacks on the site or users of the site.
If your comment does not directly relate to improving the article, it may be deleted without a response, or moved to the appropriate location. Comments that do get a response may be deleted from the page after some time.
The reason for this rule is to not create disruptions on talk pages, and to not take up our editors time. Debating can be time-consuming and is not what this website is here for.
If you would like to debate issues concerning Islam, please use a forum, e.g. the FFI forum (you will have to create a separate account there if you do not have one already). For questions about how to use or edit WikiIslam, leave a message at the Help Desk. And for general inquiries/suggestions, use the relevant Discussions page.
Indenting
Good indentation makes prolonged discussions on talk pages easier to read and understand. It is a behavioral guideline that editors are expected to follow.
Replies should always be indented and placed beneath the last comment. Indents are achieved by typing one or more leading colon ":" characters at the very left margin, just before the new text about to be added. With every new comment added, the number of colons must be increased by one.
Examples
What is typed:
| This is a talk page comment. --~~~~
:This is the first reply. --~~~~ ::This is the second reply. --~~~~ |
How it looks:
| This is a talk page comment. --Amina (talk) 12:24, 5 March 2014 (PST) |
See WikiIslam:Signatures for help with signing comments.
Outdenting
A long discussion will cause indentation to become too deep, which can make it difficult to read in narrower browser windows. When this occurs, editors should consider resetting the level of indentation by outdenting their next comment. Outdenting can be performed by using the "Outdent" template; either by typing {{Outdent}} or clicking on it in the "User interaction" section of the lower Edit toolbar.
Examples
In the following example, the user adding the final comment has typed the characters of the template, including its "braces", at the left margin, below the preceding comment, and just ahead of the text she entered for her own comment:
What is typed:
| This is a talk page comment. --~~~~
:This is the first reply. --~~~~ ::This is the second reply. --~~~~ :::This is the third reply. --~~~~ {{Outdent}}This is the fourth reply, but the first to be outdented. --~~~~ |
How it looks:
| This is a talk page comment. --Amina (talk) 12:24, 5 March 2014 (PST)
This is the fourth reply, but the first to be outdented. --Amina (talk) 12:56, 5 March 2014 (PST) |
This example has been exaggerated for demonstration purposes. A lot more indentations would be used before outdenting is required in an actual talk page discussion.