Wikipedia:Content forks/Internal
This is an explanatory essay about the Wikipedia:Content forks and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
This page in a nutshell: The reasoning at Wikipedia:Content forks sometimes also applies to internal Wikipedia material. |
Discussion forks
Discussions
It is sometimes useful to relocate a discussion to a more appropriate page; this is usually effectively done by posting a pointer to the new discussion from the old one, though if discussion continues in the original location, it may be appropriate to close it, for example with:
==Discussion heading here==
{{Discussion top|result= {{Moved discussion to|[[Other page name#Thread name]] }} }}
[Forked discussion here]
{{Discussion bottom}}
When neutrally advertising a discussion to other talk pages, you can help prevent discussion forking at the locations of these notices by prefacing them with {{FYI|pointer=y}}
, immediately after the section heading for the notice. It is also helpful to spell out the location of the discussion (e.g., Please see [[Pagename#Thread]].) rather than to effectively hide it with a piped link (e.g., Please see [[Pagename#Thread|this]].).
Exceptions
In most cases, an open discussion is preferably kept at the place where it first began, with split-off discussions closed and retargetted to the oldest open discussion. However, in some of the exceptional cases described below it is also possible, depending on circumstances, that both old and new discussion are kept open concurrently, or that the older discussion is closed rather than the newer one. Examples:
- When a discussion moves from an article talk page to WP:DRN), the article talk topic is hardly ever formally closed;
- When a discussion moves from that noticeboard to another noticeboard, it is always the older DRN discussion that is closed in favour of the newer one.
Content issue versus behavioral issue
Some pages are not suitable for discussing behavioral issues (e.g. article talk pages,
Escalation to a broader venue
If a local
Patently wrong venue
If a new discussion topic is opened in a venue where it doesn't belong (e.g. an issue regarding the biography of a 19th-century person at
User talk
While splitting up user-talk discussions is most often undesirable and potentially confusing or unconducive to resolution of issues, users have broad leeway to reply on their own talk page or that of a particular editor to issues or questions that are sometimes inappropriately raised elsewhere, and may
Clarity about venue
A bit of advice for closers of discussions: It is best to not leave participants in a discussion guessing where to go next after a discussion has been closed – regardless of the nature of the discussion (other than {{
Policy forks
It is never constructive to attempt to create a new page or section of
When summary style is applied to such material – e.g., with one narrow page summarizing the applicable guidance of another, broader one – the original page or section should be linked to from the summarizing one, and it may be appropriate to use a {{Main}}
template atop the summarizing section to point to the original prominently. This helps people find the controlling material, and helps editors keep the advice and its language compatible across pages.
If you disagree with the wording or interpretation of any policy material (broadly defined), the appropriate process is to open a discussion on its talk page and seek consensus to change or clarify it. While an attempt to just
Essay forks
However, a few essays, and other types of pages with the authority level of essays (i.e., below policies and guidelines) are informational not opinional, and are well-accepted by the community, representing a broad consensus. It is not constructive to do something like draft up your own opposition version that directly contradicts a page like
aside). If you disagree with something in a page like this, it is more productive to propose a change to the current version at its talk page.Even for opinional essays,
If you do feel your material should be in a separate page, please ensure that it is categorized appropriately in the subcategories of Category:Wikipedia essays (if in the "Wikipedia:" namespace) or Category:User essays (if in the "User:" namespace), has cross-references to it in the "See also" sections of other relevant essays (to avoid the orphaned essay problem), and see Wikipedia:Essays § Finding essays for some indexes in which to list your essay and a brief description of it. Unless you expect that people will frequently refer to the essay on talk pages, it is not necessary and is even undesirable to create a shortcut for it; the available intelligible shortcuts are a finite resource.
Process forks
Process-forking (or procedure-forking) is generally a poor idea.
Disruptive process-forking: Creating a new process page in opposition to an established one will almost certainly be interpreted as disruptive, and get sent to WP:Miscellany for deletion (MfD). Wikiprojects are a form, or at least locus, of process. A bogus wikiproject set up as a "canvassing farm" – to oppose a consensus, lobby for changes to policy, over-control article content for a specific viewpoint, or any other activity antithetical to Wikipedia goals and smooth operation, will be deleted with prejudice at MfD.
Some process forks can have incidentally disruptive effects – usually a result of
Remember that a "local consensus" among a small group of editors can't override site-wide consensus – including about how Wikipedia operates – absent a very good reason that the community accepts.
Some process forking has been organic, with different – even confusingly dissimilar – procedures evolving over time for rather parallel processes. These have polar tendencies to either slowly normalize towards each other, or to become ingrained and ossified. The former is preferable since it reduces the number and peculiarity of rules and systems that Wikipedians are expected to learn and comply with.
Template forks
Wikipedia has thousands of
Just directly forking the code of a template is often ill-advised. New templates that substantially duplicate the behavior of old ones with a minor variation are usually
If consensus has been achieved for a template to format something a particular way (e.g for accessibility reasons), or to not include some information deemed inappropriate, it is generally not okay to fork your own copy that does it the way you wish consensus had settled on.
Finally, when two templates are very similar (or an old-style template and a newer Lua module are, and the template does not already rely on the module), and they are kept un-merged for a reason, it is not helpful to fork their options – especially what parameters are supported and what their names are – without a very good reason to do so. It makes using our templates much more difficult for everyone when related ones are not in-sync.