Help talk:Wiki tips

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[edit] Active Talk Pages

Hi guys: I'm glad you brought this page over from Muppet Wiki; that's awesome. The "Active Talk Pages" section doesn't really translate well yet. Active Talk Pages is a neat system, and I'd definitely recommend it to other wikis; it just needs some explanation.

Basically, the question we were trying to answer was: If I post on an article's talk page, how are people going to notice that there's something there? Is anyone going to pay attention to the fact that the "discussion" tab is blue instead of red?

So here's what we came up with: We created a template at Template:Talk, with a "talk box" that says "A question about this article has been posted on the talk page." So when somebody posts a question on a talk page, then you also post the {{talk}} template at the top of the article. Then anybody who's reading the article knows there's a question.

The "talk box" template also adds a category tag: [[Category:Active Talk Pages]]. We have a link to the Active Talk Pages category at the top of the main page, so people can go there and see all of the current discussions at once.

Once a question's been answered, then we take the "talk box" off the article -- so the Active Talk Pages category is just the most current stuff.

It's a good system, and it works like a charm! People check the Active Talk Pages all the time, and questions get answered a lot faster than I would have expected.

So that's what that section means on this "wiki tips" page. If you like this idea, then you might want to expand that section, or put it on a different page or something. Let me know if there's anything I can tell you about it. See ya! -- Danny (Toughpigs 04:28, 7 Jan 2006 (UTC))