This template is a signpost. It may be used on talk pages to attract commentary from inexperienced editors, or where there are high levels of debate from everyone. It provides:

• Intro – a short introduction and appropriate links for newcomers
• Policies – a reminder of important policies for experienced Wikipedians
• Archives – a list of links to the current talk page's archives, and a search box
• Find sources links – a set of links to aid in finding reliable sources for the article topic

Usage

Basic

{{Talk header}}

To add this template to a talk page, just open an edit of the talk page, and put {{Talk header}} at the top of the page.

This template should be placed only where it's needed. Don't visit talk pages just to add this template, and don't place it on the talk pages of new articles. Talk pages that are frequently misused, that attract frequent or perpetual debate, articles often subject to controversy, and highly-visible or popular topics may be appropriate for this template.

By convention, this template goes at the very top of the talk page, above WikiProject templates and other talk-page banners. However, this is not an absolute rule, and editors should use common sense when deciding its placement. See also: WP:Talk page layout § Lead (bannerspace).

In accordance with talk page guidelines, this template should not be added to otherwise empty talk pages. That changes the "discussion" tab at the top of the page from a "redlink" into a "bluelink", which may mislead people into thinking there is discussion.

For more information on this topic, see the talk page for this template, including the talk archives and the TfD logs.

Parameters

Full syntax – Vertical

Horizontal

{{talk header |bottom= |disclaimer= |custom_header= |wp= |display_title= |arpol= |sc1= |sc2= |sc3= |sc4= |sc5= |demospace= |hide_find_sources= |search= |search_term1= |search_term2= |search_term3= |search_term4= |noarchive= |age= |bot= |units= |minthreadsleft= }}

Hiding the template

If you would prefer not to see this template on any talk page, you can hide it from your view. Note that this will hide page archive links and the archive search box as well if they are configured to be shown through this template. You'll need to have a named account to do this.

1. Edit your user style page at Special:Mypage/common.css.
2. Add a line: #talkheader {display:none;}
3. Save the change.
4. Bypass your cache.

Parameters by functionality group

This section describes parameters according to which functionality group they belong to. Each subsection below corresponds to one of the four main areas of functionality listed in the bullet items at the top.

Intro and newcomer links

Basic tips for newcomers are boxed with a white background and appear top left, and includes starting a new section, using tildes to sign their posts, and how to get help.

Article policies

In the article namespace only, a box of "Article policies" is included by default.

In non-article namespaces, the "Article policies" box can be added via |arpol=yes. For example:

{{talk header|arpol=yes|noarchive=yes|search=yes|User:$1|User:$2}}

Note: |arpol=no is an invalid setting, and has no effect on header display in any namespace.

Archives

Links to archives

If present, archive index and links to archives look like this (example shown is for Talk:Europe):

Bot notice

If the page is auto-archived by a bot, the bot notice appears flush right, as in the example shown above.

The following parameters contribute to a small notification that the talk page is archived by a bot (typically by Lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III). The template will include a tooltip informing readers of the amount of time before discussions are archived. This tooltip will not be shown if there are no archives to be listed.

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=30|units=days}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 30 days. (See #Examples.)

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=6|units=months|minthreadsleft=4}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 6 months, as long as at least 4 sections remain. (See #Examples.)

These parameters are for informational purposes, not to actually set up archiving. Please see WP:AUTOARCHIVE for instructions. For an alternative template to inform readers of automatic archiving settings, see {{Archives}}.

|bot= The bot used to archive the page, unwikilinked.

|age= Enter a number to convey the amount of time the bot is set to wait for until archiving a discussion as expressed as a number of time units, as set by the units parameter.

|units= Enter a string to convey the unit the age parameter refers to. Useful examples include days, month, months etc

|minthreadsleft= The amount of threads the bot will leave. The tooltip will include a message telling the reader that after minthreadsleft threads, threads older than age will be archived.

Search box

If present, the search box appears below the Archiving links:

In this working example, entering search terms searches the talk page archives of the article Europe.

"Find sources" links

For article Talk pages, a set of "find sources" links appears by default in the Talk header box. The default links correspond to the output of Template:Find sources; see Talk:Europe for an example.

In article Talk space, the "find sources" links may be suppressed by setting the |hide_find_sources=yes parameter. These links do not appear outside of Talk space.

Testing issues

Namespace testing

For testing and demonstration purposes, this template can take a parameter named demospace which enables testing of the find sources opt-out parameter |hide_find_sources= from other namespaces.

• If demospace has the value main or the value 1 it returns the findsources text it would normally return when transcluded from mainspace.
• It demospace any other value such as the name of some other namespace it returns the text it would if transcluded outside of mainspace.
• If the parameter is empty or undefined, the actual page type determines the result.

Examples

Archiving notice

The following parameters contribute to a small notification that the talk page is archived by a bot (typically by Lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III). The template will include a tooltip informing readers of the amount of time before discussions are archived. This tooltip will not be shown if there are no archives to be listed.

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=30|units=days}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 30 days.

{{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=6|units=months|minthreadsleft=4}}

This informs the user the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page sections that are older than 6 months, as long as at least 4 sections remain.

TemplateData

Tracking categories

• Category:Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters (0)

See also

• {{New discussion}}
• {{Not a forum}}
• {{Portal talk}}
• {{Skip to talk}}
• {{WikiProject banner shell}}
• Wikipedia:Template index/Talk namespace
• Wikipedia:Template index/User talk namespace
• MediaWiki:Talkpagetext

Notes