Refactoring talk pages

(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.

See also: Clogged talk pages and Talk page noise

Refactoring talk pages is a means of structuring them with the purposes of

1. making them more readable and useful to future people who read the talk page later
2. making them less dry (not because you didn't like or disagreed with the content they were bearing),
3. making browsing archives more useful and less time-consuming.

This is especially useful when the volume of talking is large, but may occasionally also be useful in small discussions.

Such activity may include:

• Renaming dry headlines.
• Splitting a discussion in two, either on the same level in a subsection, depending in scope.
• Removing talk page noise.
• Not editing other peoples' comments. If a comment needs to belong partly to one section and partly toanother section, splitting it is acceptable.

Example 1

Was:

Dogs

• Dogs are barking, and it's raining. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Now:

Dogs

• Dogs are barking, and it's raining. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Split by topic for a reasonable discussion. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Weather

• Dogs are barking, and it's raining. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Split by topic for a reasonable discussion. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Example 2

Was:

Your recent edit

You need to use a spell checker, I did some proofreading and corrected spelling. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Now:

Suggestion to use a spell checker (was: Your recent edit)

Title edited for readability. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

You need to use a spell checker, I did some proofreading and corrected spelling. --Gryllida 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)