Template:Talk header

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This template is a signpost. It displays a talk page message box with four sections of content:

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

Portions of the standard boilerplate text may be modified with params that specify additional or replacement text.

Usage

{{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.

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: Wikipedia:Talk page layout § Lead (bannerspace).

Should this be added to every talk page?

This template should be placed in accordance with talk page guidelines. This template does not need to be placed on every talk page, and should not be indiscriminately added to talk pages using automated editing tools. Talk pages that are frequently misused, that attract frequent debate, articles often subject to controversy, articles that typically attract new editors, and highly-visible or popular topics may be appropriate for this template.

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

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

Horizontal

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

Hiding the template

A registered user who prefers not to see this template on any talk page, may hide it from view. Note that this hides 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 an 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.

Portions of the template may be hidden for all viewers using a template parameter: see here to hide the "find sources" links; see here to hide the archive links.

Parts of the header

This section describes the different parts of the header. Each subsection below corresponds to one of the four main areas of functionality listed in the bullet items at the top, and explains which parameters are available to modify their appearance.

Intro and newcomer links

Basic tips for newcomers are boxed with a white background and appear top left, and includes starting a new section and how to get help. The intro links are displayed in the top left portion of the message box:

Policies

Talk page policies

A bullet list of policies, and behavioral and talk page guidelines is included by default in the top right portion of the message box.

Article policies

In the article namespace only, a list of bulleted "Article policies" is included by default. It occupies part of the top right section of the message box, to the right of the talk page policies.

In non-article namespaces, the "Article policies" box is absent by default, but it may be added via |arpol=yes. For example:

{{talk header|arpol=yes}}

Note: |arpol=no is an invalid setting, and has no effect on header display in any namespace. The article policies may be suppressed from view in all namespaces by adding #talkheader .talkheader-policies{display:none} to your common.css.

"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. These links appear after the initial article policies and links for newcomers, and above the archiving section. For the article Europe, it looks like this:

Background

There are several flavors of "find sources" links (medical, video, general) targeted to different search domains. The flavor of "find sources" links displayed in the Talk header depends on WikiProject membership of the article and may correspond to one of these:

• {{find medical sources}} – for articles in the medical search domain
• {{find video game sources}} – for articles in the video game search domain
• {{find general sources}} – the default, for everything else, is the general domain.

The default search domain is "general", which is the large majority of all Talk pages, and displays the links found in template {{find general sources}}. The search domain is determined automatically by the template, depending on the presence of the corresponding WikiProject. If an article belongs to WikiProject Medicine, it is in the medical search domain by default; if it belongs to WikiProject Video games, it is in the video game search domain by default. (If it is in both, then the highest domain in the list above is chosen; i.e, 'medical'.)

Example

For the page Talk:Giardiasis, which belongs to WP:WikiProject Medicine, it looks like this:

You can modify the nature of the source links displayed by § Hiding the links, § modifying the query terms, or by § modifying the search domain.

Hiding the links

By default, these links do not appear outside of article Talk space (ns=1).

Within article Talk space, the "find sources" links may be suppressed by setting parameter |hide_find_sources=yes.

Modifying the "find sources" query terms

The find sources links use the article title by default as the search term and forms an "exact search" (or "double-quoted query") from the title. If the article title contains parenthetical disambiguation portion, this is appended after the exact search query term, as an additional, unquoted phrase.

In place of the default, the query terms may be specified by using |search_term= (alias: |search_term1=) to specify the exact search string. Parameter |search_term2= may be added to specify additional, unquoted query terms, as many as desired.

Search domain override

The default domain chosen by automatic WikiProject detection may be overridden using param |search-domain=:

• |search-domain=medical – use medical as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: med)
• |search-domain=video game – use video games as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: video, and vg))
• |search-domain=general – use general as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias: gen)

The parameter alias |domain= may be used instead; thus, |domain=med means the same thing as |search-domain=medical.

Archives

The archives section of the Talk header occupies the bottom of the Talk header box. It consists of (up to) three portions:

• a set of links to Talk page archives
• archive bot notice
• an archive search box

The first and last portions are displayed automatically at the bottom of this template when used on a talk page that has archives that are named in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no archive links or search box is displayed. The archive bot notice is only displayed if parameters are manually added.

Parameters |noarchive=yes and |search=no are available to suppress the links to Talk archive pages and to the search box. Four additional parameters are available to add an optional § archive bot notice adjacent to the archive links and to control its appearance.

Links to archives

If Talk page archives exist and are named in the standard sequential way, using either a numeric sequence or the alphabetic system with names like /Archive A, or with yearly archives of the format /Archive 2026, links to all of the archive pages are displayed. If this template cannot find any archives because they are not named the standard sequential way, it will behave as if no archive pages exist.

|noarchive=yes suppresses links to archives.

For archives using numeric sequencing, the archive links look like this (example shown is for Talk:Europe):

A link to the archive index is included in the list if it exists and has the standard name "/Archive index". There is no parameter to independently suppress this.

Archive bot notice

Pages can be set up to be automatically archived by a bot (typically by Lowercase sigmabot III or ClueBot III).

The talk header offers an archive bot notice containing the text "Auto-archiving period" at the right for informational purposes. It does not set up automatic archiving, and it isn't automatically shown just because automatic archiving has been set up. It simply informs the reader that automatic archiving takes place, whether or not that actually is the case. For instructions on how to configure Talk page archiving, see Help:Archiving a talk page.

This is controlled by four related parameters: |archive_bot=, |archive_age=, |archive_units=, and |minthreadsleft=. Remember, these parameters are completely independent of the configuration of the archiving bot, and do not impact archiving, even if set to values that do not match the bot configuration. You are responsible for updating these parameters whenever you update the bot's configuration.

The following parameters may be used to control the display of the archive bot notice:

• |archive_bot= – The bot used to archive the page, unwikilinked. (Alias: |bot=.)

• |archive_age= – Enter a number to convey the amount of time the bot must wait after the last update to a discussion section or thread before archiving the discussion, as expressed as a number of time units. The default time unit is "days", see the next parameter. (Alias: |age=.)

• |archive_units= – Enter a string to convey the time unit the archive_age parameter refers to. (Alias: |units=.) If omitted, the default is "days" in plural. Useful alternatives include month, months, etc. As this is just an advisory notice and not a configuration parameter, you can use any string you wish here: if you want to inform readers archiving takes place every "2 fortnights" for example, you can: use |age=2 |units=fortnights. You are responsible for specifying a time unit in the singular, if the |archive_age= is set to 1 (1 month, for example).

• |minthreadsleft= – The amount of discussion sections or threads the bot will leave. This information is not shown directly. Instead, a tooltip informs readers that once the Talk page contains more than minthreadsleft threads, threads older than archive_age will be archived.

Note that an archive bot can be instructed to only archive when more than one discussion section or thread is eligible; this behavior cannot be expressed using this notice. That is; there is no counterpart to, for example, the |minthreadstoarchive= used by Lowercase sigmabot III.

Some examples:

• {{talk header|archive_bot=lowercase sigmabot III|archive_age=30}} – This informs the user that lowercase sigmabot III will autoarchive talk page discussion sections or threads that are older than 30 days (the example retains the default time unit "days").
• {{talk header|bot=lowercase sigmabot III|age=6|units=months|minthreadsleft=4}} – This informs the user that the lowercase sigmabot III bot will autoarchive talk page discussion sections or threads that are older than six months, as long as at least four sections or threads remain.

These parameters are for informational purposes in the talk header, and do not actually set up archiving or interact with the bot in any way. Make sure they are not misleading by making sure to update them whenever you update the configuration of an archive bot. For instructions on how to configure Talk page archiving, see Help:Archiving a talk page.

If you wish to include an independent, stand-alone archive bot notice on the page outside of the Talk header message box, set |noarchive=yes in this template, and see Template:Archives for an alternative method of generating an archive bot notice.

Search box

The archive search box may be used to search the Talk page archives, and is displayed automatically at the bottom of this template just below the archive page links, when used on a talk page that has archives that are named in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no search box is displayed.

Parameter |search=no may be used to suppress the search box only, while still displaying the archive links themselves.

If present, the search box appears below the Archiving links, and is the last element to appear in the template:

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

Suppressing links or search box

By default, the Talk header template displays a list of archive links, if any archives are present. Parameter |noarchive=yes may be used to suppress the list.

By default, the template displays an archive search box if any archives are present. Parameter |search=no may be used to suppress display of the archive search box. Note that, in particular |search=yes has no effect, and will not place a search box on a talk page that has no archives.

Additional and replacement text

Besides the four main sections of the talk header box, the template provides three parameters which may be used to include additional sections or modified text:

• |bottom=
• |custom header=
• |wp=.

bottom

|bottom=yes – adds a message above the main talk header box, separately bordered, about where to place new discussions:

custom_header

|custom_header=your text here – adds any desired text above the main talk header. Text is in boldface by default, and has a horizontal rule below, separating it from the rest of the content.

Example

Showing |custom_header= with the first line of Lorem ipsum text:

If used together with |bottom=: the "New discussions placement" text appears above everything in a separately bordered box; the main talk header box is below that, and the custom text appears in the main box, above the newbie and article policy links and separated from them by a horizontal rule.

wp

|wp=yes – Extends the bolded lead sentence of the header, to add the words "Pagename and anything related to its purposes and tasks" as follows:

This parameter has no effect on pages outside of the Wikipedia talk namespace.

Testing issues

Find sources testing

For testing and demonstration purposes, this template accepts parameter |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.
• If |demospace= has 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.

The dynamic features of WikiProject autodetection and § Search domain override depend on the article title where it appears, and therefore cannot be tested in the normal way. The test cases page provides an explanation of how to test these features using Special:ExpandTemplates with the ContextTitle enabled, or by using in situ testing.

Expensive parser functions

This template uses up to 24 expensive parser functions (during 2026, with it increasing by one a year) depending on what parameters are used. In theory, on pages with very large numbers of other templates using expensive parser functions this could result in template limits being reached, but this is very unlikely. It could also affect expansion of templates on a test page that has more than 20 uncollapsed invocations of this template, especially ones appearing lower on the page.

TemplateData

A signpost for the top of talk pages

Template parameters[Edit template data]

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Shortcut	1 shortcut shortcut1 sc sc1	Shortcut that displays similar to the {{shortcut}} template, but within the Talk header message box Example WP:SHOR	Page name	suggested
Shortcut 2	2 shortcut2 sc2	A second shortcut	Page name	optional
bottom	bottom	Set to "yes" to add additional instructions at the top to "please place new discussions at the bottom of the talk page" Suggested values yes	Boolean	optional
Custom header	custom_header	Replaces the entire header with customized text	Line	optional
WikiProject?	wp	For use on WikiProject talk pages; set to "yes" to add "and anything related to its purposes and tasks" to the header	Boolean	optional
Display title	display_title	Displays a custom page title	String	optional
Article policies	arpol	Adds a link to the article policy pages Default On for article talk pages, off otherwise	Boolean	optional
demospace	demospace	Namespace number or name for testing purposes	String	optional
Hide find sources?	hide_find_sources	Set to "yes" to hide the find sources banner on article talk pages	Boolean	optional
Search term	search_term search_term1	Changes the search term used in the {{find sources}} module	String	optional
Search term 2	search_term2	Adds a second search term for unquoted search, as used in the {{find sources}} module	String	optional
Search domain	search-domain domain	Changes the default search domain used in the {{find sources}} module Suggested values medical video general	String	optional
No archives?	noarchive noarchives archives	Set to "yes" to hide the archives links Suggested values yes	Boolean	optional
Archive age	archive_age age	Amount of time, by default in days, before discussions will be automatically archived. Note: Does not actually trigger automatic archiving; see [[WP:ARCHIVE]].	Number	suggested
Archive bot	archive_bot bot	The bot used to archive the page. Note: Does not actually trigger automatic archiving; see [[WP:ARCHIVE]]. Suggested values Lowercase sigmabot III ClueBot III	String	suggested
Archive units	archive_units units	The units for archive_age Suggested values hours days months years Default days	String	optional
Minimum threads left	minthreadsleft	The number of threads the archiving bot will leave. Currently affects only the tooltip.	Number	suggested
Search	search	Set to "no" to override the default behavior for the search box appearance	Boolean	optional

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

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Talk header/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.