Forum:Talkheader template

Digging up old, forgotten templates on my other wiki, I found this template. It appears to be a "Talkheader" template of some sort. The Talkheader template is added to the top of every talk page, and basically helps new users know what a talk page is about.

A Talkheader reminds users to:


 * 1) Stay civil, calm, and cool as cucumbers
 * 2) Add new discussions at the bottom of the page, separated by a Level 2 header, and to put new messages underneath older ones, like an Internet forum
 * 3) Stay on topic. Talk pages are not coffee shops or casual hangout spots
 * 4) Sign their posts by adding four tildes ( ~ ) or use the Signature button in the editor

A Talkheader can also provide a nice, large link to "Start a new discussion", as well as show links to the talk page archives, etc. All sorts of good stuff.

Wikipedia uses this template extensively as well. The Talkheader contains a bit more stuff over there, but let's not go down that path. That's not important right now.

I bring this up on the dinner planning table because the template might help new users get engaged into discussions on the wiki, and also helps them use talk pages more efficiently. If there's one fully-automated bot I really want to install on this wiki that doesn't perform my cheesy syntax-fixing edits or write entire articles of featured article quality (or even sing and entertain us, 'specially in IRC), it would be SineBot, a bot that automatically adds Unsigned to unsigned comments on talk pages, as well as other pages that require signatures (e.g. the Battles). I had a friend that came up to me and asked me how to use this "whole talk page thingy", and after I was done explaining, he said "Just looking at a talk page without any instructions in the front confuses me." That's what I think the "Talkheader" template would solve.

Granted, it's not going to help everyone. But it is going to help a lot of newbies on the wiki when they're told to "use the talk page". And it might also help with the unsigned comments - the only unsigned comments we should get after this are those who claim that they're "too lazy to read the instructions", but we all know that's the silliest excuse ever.

Okay, enough rambling. Is the community in favour of such a template? --k6ka (talk &#124; contribs) 16:40, June 21, 2014 (UTC)