Minecraft Wiki:Talk page guidelines

On every wiki page that a user can edit, whether it's an article, file, category, template, module, or something else, there is a talk page associated with it that you can use to discuss the contents of the page.

These talk pages are useful for discussion, improvement, and clarification. You should use them to discuss major changes to a page, like layout, or content verification, but they lose their use if they are not used in an organized fashion.

Remember to follow Rule #3, maintaining civil discussions with no harassment or any kind of personal attack. Below are some guidelines for using talk pages.

When you enter a talk page, there may already be some topics there, or there may be nothing at all. You should read the guide at Help:Talk pages to learn how talk pages work. Talk pages should only be used for discussing the content of the page they belong to. When creating a new topic, it should discuss that content of the page; talk pages should not be used for any of the following:

• Suggesting a new game feature; we are not Mojang. Use the feedback site for this instead.
• Reporting issues with the topic's in-game behavior. Use Mojang's bugtracker instead.
• Discussing your opinion on the topic's existence or usage in the game.
• Acting as a tutorial; tutorial content should instead exist on the Tutorial namespace.
• Acting as a content page or a proposed page, or page rewrite. Content pages should be in a content namespace, and page proposals should be made in either the Minecraft Wiki sandbox or a personal subpage, and then may be linked to discuss.

A user's main talk page (located at the User talk: namespace) may be used for direct communication with that user. Other talk pages in the user namespace may be used for discussion unrelated to Minecraft or the wiki, although all other rules and guidelines still apply.

However, you should not be here for user pages, as the wiki is for documenting the Minecraft franchise and is not a web host or social media site. If the majority of your edits are focused on user or user talk pages, you may be blocked from editing said pages if an administrator gives you clear notice to change your behavior and you do not follow.

When replying, remember to keep your comments on topic. If the topic does not cover what you want to say, consider starting a new topic on the talk page. You should also keep in mind these guidelines when replying:

• Talk pages are not social media, chats, or instant messaging.
  • Express your opinion in a single message, and only write a new comment if it significantly adds to the conversation.
  • The wiki provides both Discord and Zulip servers for instant messaging.
• You should not edit other users' comments, except to sign unsigned comments or fix formatting.
• Do not delete topics or comments unless they are your own and have not been replied to, except when archiving or if the topic violates another guidelines.
  • You may remove topics/comments from your own user talk pages.
• If replying to multiple topics at the same time, answer each topic within its own topic, rather than placing all replies in one place.
• You should also generally avoid replying to topics with the last post over a year ago, as your answer is likely not the case back then. If the question is still relevant, consider starting a new topic instead.

You can mention (ping) other users by linking to their user page, or using a template that does so, such as {{ping}} or {{reply}}, and adding a signature (see next section) in the same edit, or linking to their user page in an edit summary (this only works if no more than two users are mentioned in the same edit). However, templates used in edit summaries do not work.

This can be used to pull someone into a subject that warrants their attention, or notify them of a reply on a page they may not be monitoring. It is not necessary to mention a user on their own user talk page, as they should be getting notifications there already. However, you should be careful when mentioning; you should only mention people when their participation would benefit or give more insight to a discussion, otherwise it would be annoying and fill their notifications up unnecessarily.

The wiki makes use of the DiscussionTools system, which is an easier-to-use interface for replying and creating topics which automatically adds your username and a timestamp to your comments.

However, when editing the page source code (for example, when replying to multiple topics at the same time or closing a topic), you need to add a signature manually. Always sign your posts using ~~~~ if you are not using the default interface.

You can modify your signature in your preferences, provided it fits the following criteria:

• Your signature must contain a link to one of your user pages, user talk pages, or related logs (contributions, etc.). This required link must not be interwiki.
• You may not link to another user's page, and other internal links not directly related to your general information should be avoided.
• Interwiki links are allowed, provided they follow the same guidelines as internal links, though they are discouraged.
• Signatures may not contain a category link.
• Signatures may contain any number of images, but they must be no taller than 20 pixels. If the image is taller than it is wide, use x20px instead of 20px.
• You may not add external links in your signature. External links are links to other websites. See Help:Link.
• Your signature may contain templates, although they are substituted by default. If you want to include templates in your signature, you should use {{subst:global signature}} and Special:MyPage/sig, to ensure that your signature stays working on other wikis as well.
  • The code generated by your signature must not be longer than 250 characters.
  • You must ensure that your signatures keep your previous username if you change it, so that direct links to your comments are not broken by the name change.

• Your signature must display your username, or an obvious variation of it.
• Your signature must not contain another user's username.
• Do not use large text or formatting in your signature; the signature should have no noticeable effect on the line height.
• Avoid using font sizes that are excessively small.
• Ensure that any font colors are legible against both light mode's and dark mode's background color, as well every namespace's background color.
• Keep signatures concise. Signatures are to identify the user; user pages can be used for lengthy descriptions.
• Your signature may not contain deprecated or obsolete HTML or CSS elements (e.g. <font>, <tt>, etc.), or any other formatting that causes lint errors.

If someone else did not sign their comment, sign it for them using {{subst:unsigned|username|time}}. If the unsigned post was added in the last edit, you can automatically sign it with a button under the advanced toolbar by having the "automatic signing" gadget enabled in your preferences.

While talk pages are the main places to discuss changes to a single page, there are a few unique places that serve to discuss changes to multiple pages, or serve discussion-related purposes:

• The community portal's talk page, a place for general discussions that do not quite fit a single talk page, and questions about the wiki.
• The forum, a place for in-depth wiki discussions that involve large changes to more than a single page.
• The admin noticeboard, where you can report wiki issues and bugs, as well as users if needed.

These pages work for communication between users, and should respect the guidelines mentioned on this page as well.

Along with the guidelines for usage of talk pages, good talk page formatting is helpful too. On talk pages, topics are denoted using an == h2 == header, and sub-topics can be denoted using an === h3 === header. The main header is automatically created by DiscussionTools, while sub-topics can be added through the source mode of the tool.

Always indent your replies to one level after the comment to which you are replying by adding colons in front of them, and using {{comment}} is advised to indicate your position. If a large number of indents are reached, usually around 10 indents, you should add {{outdent}} before your comment instead of doing an 11th indent; this helps visibility on mobile devices as well as desktop. This outdented comment should be indented with 3 indents.

For clarity on the editing screen, it is advised to copy the list markup between comments by separate users:

:Lorem ipsum -User 1
:Lorem ipsum -User 2

There should not be a separation line between indents, as this breaks the display of the comments.

Generally, avoid using templates that are not designed for talk pages, as they may change or break at any time without ease of updating them. A list of talk page templates can be found here.

When linking to a category or a file, you should escape it by using a colon before the namespace in the link (e.g. [[:File:Creeper.png]]).

== A single topic ==
Initial topic -User 1

:Reply -User 2
::Reply to user 2 -User 3
:Reply to user 1 -User 4
::Reply with a [[link]] -User 2
:::Reply with a [[:Category:Main]] -User 3

=== A subtopic ===
Initial sub-topic post -User 5

:Reply -User 1

== A proposal topic ==
A proposal -User 1

:{{c|agree}} -User 2
:{{c|agree}} Reason -User 3
::Comment on user 3's post -User 4
:{{c|disagree}} -User 5
:{{c|comment}} -User 6

Sometimes a user will start a topic on a talk page that should not have been used to discuss it. For example, any discussion that involves more than a single page. In such cases, it is best to move them to an appropriate page.

• Suggestions for the wiki as a whole should be moved to the community portal or the forum.
• If an article was mistaken for another one, move the topic to the article the topic is actually related to.
• User reports on the community portal should be moved to the admin noticeboard.

Copy the contents of the topic, including all headers on it, and paste them on the appropriate page. Then delete on the current page everything, except the == h2 == header, and replace the contents with a link to the section using {{moved discussion}}.

Topics should be closed when there is clear consensus (for support or oppose), if they have been open for enough time to allow users to participate and no further comments were posted for some time (usually a month, forum posts may be open for longer), or the proposed action has already been performed.

This generally should be done to prevent further comments when the discussion has finished. Use the {{close topic}} template to close a topic, and when closed it should not be edited, but still remain on the main talk page until an archive may be needed. Forum posts can be closed by setting the |closed= parameter in the {{forumheader}} template instead.

You should leave a reason when closing a discussion topic, even if the result of the discussion is obvious or clear enough to be understood, as this serves as the summary of the result of the discussion.

Closing topics is an action that should be done carefully, and as such they should not be closed too early; give them a week to a month of life at least, depending on the discussed topic. You should also consider to close topics if, when reading their contents, there is a chain of 👁 Image
 Support or 👁 Image
 Oppose replies without arguments or with "per User" as their argument.

User talk pages should only have their topics closed by the user associated to them, but should still abide by these guidelines.

If a talk page becomes too long, an archive subpage may be created to move older topics to it. Archive pages should be made as a subpage of the talk page with the name "Archive" followed by a number (for example, Talk:Pagename/Archive 1), and should not be edited for reasons other than maintenance or inclusion of older topics based on creation time.

Topics should be archived when they are both inactive (which means there have been no replies) or closed for a large period of time, and are taking up significant space on the page. They should be based on a specific month and year, on a kind of schedule. For example, if an archive is set to contain topics from Feb 2022 to Feb 2024, it should not include topics before or after these dates.

• For later dates, an additional archive may be created when necessary.
• For older dates, add them to older archives. If there is only one archive, expand its schedule coverage and move the topic there.

User talk pages may also get their topics archived if needed, but only the associated user should archive topics in most cases. They are also exempt from the guideline of when topics should be archived and the format of archive page titles as well, although they are still strongly advised to be followed for consistency.

Do not edit these archives, they are called archives for a reason. If you wish to discuss an archived topic, you should start a new topic with an optional link to the old one instead. For general help on how to archive topics, see Help:Talk archiving.

Forum posts are a unique case, because they do not strictly follow these archiving guidelines due to the nature of their structure; when closed they are automatically considered archived, and closed posts can be found from the main forum page using the searchbar.