Minecraft Wiki talk:Talk page guidelines

Replying to old posts
To clarify, is replying to an old post (general rule #4, last sentence) an undo-able offense, or just discouraged? My personal feeling is that if a topic hasn't been archived then it's open. And if a reply is no longer really relevant, then so what -- if it was in good faith, just ignore it if you don't want to reply to it or point out the reply's irrelevance. Every time we delete someone's post we may be discouraging them from becoming a positive contributor to the wiki in the future. &mdash;munin &middot;  &middot; 15:29, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I personally don't have anything against most replies, I mainly find those comments annoying when a user is pointing out all the solutions to a problem that did not exist. As for actually reverting them, since we officially have the guideline in place, it is no longer disallowed to reply to old comments (I specifically worded it to "discouraged" rather than "disallowed"), so I stopped reverting them. (I was planning on discussing this with a couple older editors, though I wanted to wait until the site notice, then I forgot about it)
 * I would agree a reply to a old comment reply makes more sense, although if we archived the pages better that would avoid the problem for the most part. It would even make sense if you see a reply to an old comment to take that as a cue to archive the topics. – KnightMiner  · (t) 16:07, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Signing your previously unsigned comment
Can we make it a rule that you should not sign a comment of yours that was already marked "unsigned"? (basically, you don't sign your post, someone else marks it with unsigned, then you replace unsigned with your current signature) I've seen several users do it, and it causes the problem where the timestamps are no longer accurate.

It may also be relevant to add a template to "sign" your previously unsigned posts, like wikipedia:Template:Signing – KnightMiner  · (t) 03:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't see that this would be particularly helpful, really. Most editors who forget to sign their post are new and don't realize they're supposed to, much less how they would do so (especially given many people are conditioned to ignore banner-like elements on web pages because of banner ads); they certainly shouldn't be expected to understand why we're telling them to sign all their posts except this one, or why having a correct timestamp is important. I would be fine with letting them know they can re-sign an unsigned post with three tildes if they leave the timestamp alone, but ultimately it isn't a big deal to just recopy the original timestamp if they sign over it. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 03:43, 27 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah, three tildes would make sense, something like "If you forget to sign a post, you make sign it using three tildes, just make sure the time stamp is the same" – KnightMiner  · (t) 16:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Closing and archiving topics
I noticed while the talk page guidelines mention archiving topics, it does not mention closed topics or specifics on archiving. I would like to propose the following section to handle those:"

If a topic has been at least 30 days since the last reply, the topic may be moved to the appropriate archive page. Archive pages should be made as a subpage of the talk page with a prefix of "Archive" before the archive number. Archived topics should not be edited for reasons other than maintenance. If a user wishes to discuss to an archived topic, they must start a new topic instead.

Topics can also be closed before being archived using close topic, and when closed the topic is under the same restrictions as an archived topic, but it still remains on the main talk page. This generally should only be done in cases where the topic is a proposal, and is done to prevent further comments on a topic when it has been resolved. In order for a topic to be closed, it either have been open for at least a week and been three days since the last reply, or the topic of the discussion must have been performed.

On user talk pages, only the controlling user should close or archive topics in most cases. They are also exempt from the restrictions of when topics can be archived or closed, and the format of the archive titles; however, the restrictions are still advised to be followed.

The main point of this is the second paragraph, as I have seen several times a user closing a topic simply because there are a lot of users agreeing or disagreeing, or they feel one of the comments removes any further need to comment, which leads to the issue of some users never being able to discuss the topic at all. The first paragraph itself is main standardizing what is already in practice, but also to allow most of general 4 to be moved to this section.

– KnightMiner  · (t) 15:12, 4 August 2015 (UTC)