Forum:Discussion page maintenance

I believe we need to tighten up (or create) a discussion page policy. Something like this:
 * Discussion pages are for discussions of article editing questions (format, layout, has this been verified, etc.).
 * Discussion pages are not for chatting about the subject of the article (This quest is the best!, How many plates have you collected? etc.).
 * Discussion page posts which do not meet the above criteria will be deleted without notice or warning. If you have something to say which does not fit our discussion page criteria, please post it in our Forums.

In addition, I suggest that admins begin taking on the added task of archiving talk pages which do not hold current "live" discussions. I think we should all just start checking for this any time we edit a page. It's much easier to maintain a discussion page when you start from a blank slate. --Gothemasticator 03:15, March 21, 2010 (UTC)


 * Fine with me. It's sometimes hard to keep track of actually relevant discussion because of the low signal-to-noise ratio on talk pages. -- Porter21 (talk) 10:24, March 23, 2010 (UTC)

New Approach
Now that Porter has imported the Archive tool (Just look at the new addition to the toolbar on discussion pages.), maintaining discussion pages just got easy. Hit the archive tool, click on "archive all," deselect any still-relevant bits, then save.

In addition, I think we should start leaving a message like the one below on user talk pages after we revert a discussion page entry.

If we start doing this as part of our regular editing habits, practice will eventually change across the wiki.

I don't think this needs to be addressed with blocking or threats of blocking either. People will catch on. Cheers.--Gothemasticator 09:38, April 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree; most people simply don't know any better and certainly don't have bad intentions. Your message reminds me of something I was pondering a while back; what do you think about creating a set of "standard" messages for frequent mistakes made by people? We could then simply substitute them (like welcome) whenever we need them. This way we'd save ourselves a bit of work, and we can make sure the messages are sufficiently polite and complete. Typing the same stuff again and again gets somewhat tiring after a while. -- Porter21 (talk) 11:00, April 16, 2010 (UTC)