Template talk:Talk header#Deduplication

On the Japanese Wikipedia, the talk header template has a message reminding people to sign their comments with four tildes and that a signature with the date and time will automatically populate. We remind people on this Wikipedia to sign with four tildes, but it is not as prominent as in the Japanese Wikipedia. I suggest we follow the Japanese Wikipedia's example and include a message to remind users to sign with four tildes, and word it as, "Sign with four tildes (~~~~). A signature with the date and time will populate." Z. Patterson (talk) 20:07, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

:The Reply tool automatically signs comments, and given that it is what users are pushed toward this seems unnecessary, especially coupled with the fact that unsigned comments are signed by a bot if a new user manages to. This template did at one point include this guidance but it was removed, quite reasonably in my opinion. The more text is visible, the less likely any of it will be read. Tollens (talk) 07:24, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

This parameter is still not discussed by the popup message explaining why/why not a page gets archived.

If | minthreadstoarchive = 2 for instance, then an editor needs to read the actual code (=editing the page) to understand why the archive bot isn't running. (It is because even though a section is clearly ripe for archiving, there is only one section to archive, and the parameter tells the bot to hold off archiving until it can archive 2 or more sections in a single go).

Either we agree the bot's behavior should be explained by what we tell talk page readers, or we agree this isn't necessary.

In the first case, the info that the bot won't act until more talk sections have expired needs to be added somehow. In the second, why not simply remove all info related to the bot's parameters? CapnZapp (talk) 14:27, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

:@CapnZapp, we could try adding it to the tooltip somehow. But I'm also not losing sleep at night over it just not being displayed, and I'd oppose any sort of display more prominent than inclusion in the tooltip. Sdkb ^talk 14:54, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

::{{re|CapnZapp|Sdkb}} I think it is a good idea if done within the tooltip. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:29, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Within the past few days, this template has started throwing up a redlinked {{cl|Pages using Talk header}} that I can't figure out how to fix.

This template is used on well over 750,000 pages, so it's clearly not a category we would actually need for tracking purposes — we have various more specialized categories, like {{cl|Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters}}, to track errors in its usage, but we would have no need whatsoever for a comprehensive category indiscriminately tracking all of its usages across the board. That's not what's actually happening, however: it isn't showing up across the board on all 750,000 usages of the template, it's showing up on isolated project pages that are invoking the template for discussion or testing purposes, such as Template:Talk header/testcases4 and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 May 17.

But it also isn't being directly transcluded by the template itself — the template only adds the more specialized error-tracking categories, while including absolutely no code that would directly transclude an indiscriminate {{cl|Pages using Talk header}}, and it hasn't been edited since December 2024 to start adding any new categories that didn't already exist previously. So once again, it's clearly being smuggled in via a module.

When the report last updated on Thursday, it was only on the testcases page, which I resolved by wrapping the invocation that was causing it in {{tl|suppress categories}} — but when I did my daily "have any of the last set of redlinks come back again" check today, it was back, this time on the TFD page. And while I could just wrap that one in the suppress wrapper too, the fact that it recurred more than once suggests that it might continue to recur if it isn't resolved at the source.

So could somebody figure out where it's coming from and make it go away? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:16, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

:I can answer the where part of that - currently the category is being emitted only by the sandbox version of this template (see Special:Diff/1291362857). As to what the purpose of it is, not too sure. Aidan9382 _(talk) 14:27, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

{{tl|Archives}}. See:

• Template talk:Archives#A narrower banner would help declutter the top of talk page.

We need someone with template skills to copy the archive banner part of {{tl|talk header}} over to {{tl|archives}}. And {{talk header}} uses Lua. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:41, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

:The archive-banner part doesn't. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:11, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

After Timeshifter suggested making {{tl|archives}}'s banner style more similar to the archives box in this template, I've been exploring the idea of replacing the archives box in the talk header here with {{tl|archives}}'s banner style with some parameters. What do you think?

{{tlg|Archives/sandbox|root{{=}}{{{1|Talk:France}}}|banner{{=}}yes|tooltip{{=}}yes|image{{=}}none|code=y|_show_result=y}}

Note some differences:

1. The horizontal rule (bar) above the search box would be removed. Though I never got why that was there anyway; the search box is very closely related to the list of archives.
2. When the archives have been set up yet the first archive page has not been created, the full template will still show:

{{tlg|Archives/sandbox|root{{=}}{{{1|User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox}}}|banner{{=}}yes|tooltip{{=}}yes|image{{=}}none|code=y|_show_result=y}}

Though I don't see any reason to at this time, I could make changes to eliminate these differences if there's consensus to. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:53, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:If there are no archives yet the whole section should be hidden. –jacobolus (t) 01:58, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

::Agreed, but the page links show, no matter what (if there're any). - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 02:05, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:::So, when there's no archives yet, you want to show this?{{pb}}{{tlg|Archives/sandbox|root{{=}}{{{1|User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox}}}|banner{{=}}yes|tooltip{{=}}yes|image{{=}}none|search{{=}}no|code=y|_show_result=y}}

:::Or do you mean hide the archive part entirely, only showing the policy reminders and stuff above the archives section of Talk Header?{{pb}}@Timeshifter recommended instead only displaying the archival configuration:{{pb}}{{tmbox|text={{automatic archives blurb|root=User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox}}|image=none}}

:::Aaron Liu (talk) 02:18, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

{{unindent|::::}}

I would like a variation of this:

{{pb}}{{tlg|Archives/sandbox|root{{=}}{{{1|User talk:Aaron Liu/sandbox}}}|banner{{=}}yes|tooltip{{=}}yes|image{{=}}none|search{{=}}no|code=y|_show_result=y}}

Except I would substitute: "ClueBot III will archive sections when more than 4 are present" for the first part. I don't know how to make the banner, so I just put it in a table. Needs the tooltip too.

--Timeshifter (talk) 03:48, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:I don't see how that's superior to "just the configuration" (box with just "Sections older than..." and nothing else). Aaron Liu (talk) 11:36, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

::That one takes up 2 lines on my 1080p monitor even at the same banner width as {{tl|talk header}}. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:24, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:::I've shortened the automatic summary so the ClueBot case for just the summary sentence is also just one line. Check out my sandbox: User:Aaron Liu/sandbox. Your suggestion also takes up two lines for sigmabot. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:30, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:If there are no archives yet, nothing needs to show at all. In practice people only add a bot to archive talk pages when they are getting long-ish and the bot is supposed to run at the earliest opportunity. We don't need any special marker for the short and trivial time window in between when the bot setup is added and the first time it runs. Thinking about this is a waste of time and effort; find something better to do. –jacobolus (t) 14:19, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

::"Thinking about this is a waste of time and effort; find something better to do." Well then, stop thinking about it, and go elsewhere with your comments.

::I, and many others, have added archiving bots to pages with few sections currently. On contentious articles for example. For example, to make sure the minimum thread settings aren't set to zero or one, as a means to stifle discussion. Also, 4 is the minimum for a table of contents to show up in Vector 2010.

::It can be months to go from 4 threads to 5 threads. So letting people know there is an archiving bot already set up keeps people from wasting time looking in the wikitext. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:01, 20 June 2025 (UTC)