Forum:Update the talk page guidelines

After some discussion with other editors on the wiki Discord, I decided to move this suggestion/proposal to a proper forum post to make it more visible to all the other users here, specially because it involves a large discussion for a guideline that applies to many pages. From now on I'll write policy and guideline change proposals on the forum, I think this could encourage more active discussion to get a better consensus, more points of view help more. --Supeika (talk) 19:52, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Currently there are some discussions on the talk page guidelines' talk page that motivated me to work on a full rework of these guidelines to make them cover nearly all possible situations while keeping room to be flexible if needed.

What I'm trying to achieve with this rework is being solid with how we tell people about our guidelines, as well as being more complete since we don't have any actually written guideline for closing pages (and archiving is way too simple).

To solve this issue I worked on this draft for the rework which makes the following changes (though I suggest reading the draft as well):

• Separated the General section into two independent sections: Starting a topic and Replying.
• Moved the mention to follow rule 3 to the intro. It's a rule so it shouldn't be mixed with guidelines.
• Renamed Pinging to Mentioning users to be consistent with how notifications tell users "User mentioned you on Page in Topic".
• Signatures is mostly unchanged except for a mention of DiscussionTools at the start, and subsections now use pseudo-headings.
• Added a section called Unique discussion pages to cover the other 3 main places of discussion on the wiki.
• Formatting is mostly unchanged except for a mention of DiscussionTools at the start, and an addition on when and how to outdent, using 3 indents each time an outdent template has to be used.
• Added sections for moving, closing and archiving topics. Closing and archiving have been inspired from older discussions on this talk page, but they have been adapted to make room for more flexibility if it is ever needed, these are guidelines after all.

I hope this rework helps these guidelines to become more clear. -- Supeika (talk) 19:12, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

You can write your opinions replying to this comment. --Supeika (talk) 19:12, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I’d use this opportunity to suggest prohibiting users from removing other users’ messages from their personal talk pages unless they violate the rules. This exemption serves no positive purpose but has potential for abuse (e. g. “this is my talk page and I can do whatever I want!” or “I don’t like this user, so I will remove any messages from them”). Aside from that, I don’t see any big issues at the first glance. BabylonAS 18:57, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Talk pages generally have similar liberties than userpages, after all they are the own talk page of an user. But you are right in that some topics shouldn't be exempt from not being deleted, so I reworded it a bit. Thanks! -- Supeika (talk) 19:36, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

For doing whatever a user wants, there are regular user pages. User talk pages are simply means of communication. BabylonAS 19:39, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Late reply sorry, but I wanted to mention that I kind of adressed this with the following: "User talk pages are more flexible with what topics can be deleted: welcoming messages without links and game questions may be deleted if desired. This applies unless the user is blocked. Any other kind of message shouldn't be deleted." I do agree removing topics is something not very desirable sometimes, but these 2 exceptions are fine for me, so yeah there it is. --Supeika (talk) 01:51, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Side note: The draft contains a typo (ctrl+f "benefir") Much More Infinite (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me! I fixed it :D -- Supeika (talk) 19:36, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

A bit of feedback: "this only works if no more than two users are mentioned in the same edit; templates do not work here" under mentioning should be "this only works if no more than two users are mentioned in the same edit. Templates also do not work here" because of grammar; the two clauses aren't really related. Also, "usually 10 indents" under formatting should be "usually around 10 indents", because who's counting? Also also, "they don't follow strictly these archiving guidelines" under archiving topics should have "strictly" before "follow"; it's just grammar. Hope this isn't needlessly nitpicky, -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  02:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It's not an issue for me, I'm not a native english speaker so it's always nice to learn some stuff. I applied these changes, and I modified a bit the part about templates to make it even clearer.--Supeika (talk) 00:47, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

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 Support, I like this. Something this large could probably always use some tweaks, but I'm not noticing anything too significant, and it can always be tweaked after implementation. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
16:31, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

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 Support – Overall not a lot to say because the changes are mostly nonsubstantial, but in terms of formatting definitely an improvement. GIM Dianliang233 (talk) 02:55, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

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 Support - Would be a good change to stop some users who just go on editing talk pages without reading the guidelines once. - 👁 Image
StizzurpXDD^(talk) 05:16, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

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 Strongest support, this will help be users read the guidelines instead of commenting against the guidelines, as Stizzurp said. All in all it's an improvement. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  14:07, 20 March 2025 (UTC)