This is just my own example of one way of contributing to talk pages that I've found useful, especially on contentious articles. It uses two fairy simple templates to suggest specific changes with sources. It can be helpful in a few ways, but is particularly good at keeping the conversation on topic, and centered on specifics.
Below is an excerpt from a discussion on the perennially contentious issue of how many golf balls can fit in a bus.
Example talk page discussion edit
I propose that we change the following line:
One study by Smith showed that 151,228 golf balls can fit in a school bus. [1]
References
- ^ Smith, J. (2010) Bored man fills school bus with golf balls. Journal of Things 4(9) pp. 277-285
Instead it should read:
One study by Smith showed that 151,228 golf balls can fit in a 40 ft. school bus.[1] However, Jayce and Widget's research suggest that this number on average is 185,789, and contend that "It's widely accepted that Smith was quite drunk throughout the course of his study, and lost count several times."[2][3][4]
References
- ^ Smith, J. (2010) Bored man fills school bus with golf balls. Journal of Things 4(9) pp. 277-285
- ^ Jayce, J. & Widget, W. (2012) A meta-analysis of filling things with golf balls. International Journal of Stuff 33(7). pp. 7-356
- ^ Garcia, E. (2012) We've literally run out of things to write about, so here's a study about golf balls. The New York Times. Retrieved 28 May 2015 from http://www.nyt.com/god_help_my_career.html
- ^ Epsom, S. (2013) Drunk man fills school bus: A response to Smith's balls. (2013) Medical Journal of Round Things 4(12). p. 4.
We all know Smith was groundbreaking in the field of school bus stuffing. JSTOR and google.scholar show he's been cited over 300 times in each database. But Jayce and Widget's meta-analysis was much more comprehensive and compares Smith to a number of similar studies. Also, their research was notable enough to be the source for a piece in the New York Times. We should also specify that Smith is working with a 40 ft. bus. Stuffing short busses (20-25 ft.) is a completely different field. GolfballZRule 19:55, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
- I really like your suggestion, but I made a change. There was an error in the Epsom source where the date was inserted twice so I removed it. I also added another study by Palmer. Busses4Lyfe 23:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
One study by Smith showed that 151,228 golf balls can fit in a 40 ft. school bus.[1] However, Jayce and Widget's research suggest that this number on average is 185,789, and contend that "It's widely accepted that Smith was quite drunk throughout the course of his study, and lost count several times."[2][3][4] Another study by Palmer suggested that the key factor in the differing results, was the fact that Jayce and Widget were both quite fat, and may have shaken the bus while adding the golf balls, allowing them to settle and pack more tightly.[5]
References
- ^ Smith, J. (2010) Bored man fills school bus with golf balls. Journal of Things 4(9) pp. 277-285
- ^ Jayce, J. & Widget, W. (2012) A meta-analysis of filling things with golf balls. International Journal of Stuff 33(7). pp. 7-356
- ^ Garcia, E. (2012) We've literally run out of things to write about, so here's a study about golf balls. The New York Times. Retrieved 28 May 2015 from http://www.nyt.com/god_help_my_career.html
- ^ Epsom, S. (2013) Drunk man fills school bus: A response to Smith's balls. Medical Journal of Round Things 4(12). p. 4.
- ^ Palmer, A (2015) Obesity as a mediating factor in golf ball methodology. Journal of Small Objects (2)1. pp 4-5
Notes edit
As we see, this format shows exactly:
- What is to be changed
- How it is to be changed
- What sources the change is based on
And to top it of, the markup is ready for whenever the change is inserted into the article. This also allows someone to copy and paste, to suggest a change of your suggested change, so that it can be refined into the perfect super-human edit. In the example, another editor quickly spots a typo and corrects it, and then suggests the addition of another study.
This method also makes it easy to keep conversation about the article and not about each other. As a supplementary rule, if you type a sentence on talk, and the subject of that sentence is another editor, there is a 94% chance that it is not productive, and will probably only make things worse.
Templates and markup edit
Copy/Paste: {{talkquote| PUT THE TEXT HERE. {{reflist-talk}} }}
There are two templates used:
{{talkquote|PUT THE TEXT HERE. TEXT TEXT TEXT.<ref>Textson, T. (2001) Case studies in generating random nonsense.</ref>}}
This gives you the nifty blue that helps separate suggested text from discussion about your proposed changes. It also makes the automatically generated content box at the top of the page ignore ==Section headers== that you include in your examples.
Second, at the end of the proposed change include {{reflist-talk}}. That will add separate reference lists to each proposal. Otherwise the references will automatically post at the bottom of the page, and worse, get smushed with every other reference on the page. So when it's all said and done, we get this:
PUT THE TEXT HERE. TEXT TEXT TEXT.[1]
References
- ^ Textson, T. (2001) Case studies in generating random nonsense.
The full explanations of these template can be found at Template:Talkquote and Template:Reflist-talk.
Screwups edit
Running list of ways I've seen this screw up:
- If you use <span> in a talkquote it seems to nukes everything. Found while suggesting Manual of Style changes and trying to use
<span id="DATES">{{Shortcut|WP:MILMOS#DATERANGE|WP:MILDATE}}</span>
- I've run into a couple of situations where the contents box randomly decides to recognize section headers in talkquotes. So far I've only seen this happen with one box per page, with all the others being ignored as they should be.
Citation templates edit
As always, its a good idea to keep the most popular variations of Template:Citation in mind and use them whenever possible: Template:Cite book, Template:Cite web, Template:Cite journal, etc. When you cite using bare WP:BAREURLS or plain text (as I did above), you're just making more work for someone to have to come in behind you and clean up.