To add this template to a talk page, just open an edit of the talk page, and put{{Talk header}} at the top of the page.
By convention, this template goes at the very top of the talk page, above WikiProject templates and other talk-page banners. However, this is not an absolute rule, and editors should use common sense when deciding its placement. See also:Wikipedia:Talk page layout § Lead (bannerspace).
Should this be added to every talk page?
There is no mandate to have this template appear on the 7,080,901+ potential talk pages. This template should not be indiscriminately added to pre-existing talk pages, especially not with bots. That said, the template should not be removed from talk pages simply because it is there.
For more information on this topic, see thetalk page for this template, including the talk archives[a] and theTfD logs.[b]
Registered users who prefer not to see this template on any talk page may hide it from view. Note that this hides pagearchive links and the archive search box as well if they are configured to be shown through this template. You'll need to havean account to do this.
Portions of the template may be hidden for all viewers using a template parameter: seehere to hide the "find sources" links; seehere to hide the archive links.
Parts of the header
This section describes the different parts of the header. Each subsection below corresponds to one of the four main areas of functionality listed in the bullet items at thetop, and explains which parameters are available to modify their appearance.
Intro and newcomer links
Basic tips for newcomers are boxed with a white background and appear top left, and includes starting a new section and how to get help. The intro links are displayed in the top left portion of the message box:
In the article namespace only, a list of bulleted "Article policies" is included by default. It occupies part of the top right section of the message box, to the right of the talk page policies.
Innon-article namespaces, the "Article policies" box is absent by default, but it may be added via|arpol=yes. For example:
{{talk header|arpol=yes}}
Note:|arpol=no is an invalid setting, and has no effect on header display in any namespace. The article policies may be suppressed from view in all namespaces by adding#talkheader .talkheader-policies{display:none} to your common.css.
"Find sources" links
For article Talk pages, a set of "find sources" links appears by default in the Talk header box. The default links correspond to the output ofTemplate:Find sources; seeTalk:Europe for an example. These links appear after the initial article policies and links for newcomers, and above the archiving section. For the articleEurope, it looks like this:
There are several flavors of "find sources" links (medical, video, general) targeted to different search domains. The flavor of "find sources" links displayed in the Talk header depends onWikiProject membership of the article and may correspond to one of these:
{{find general sources}} – the default, for everything else, is thegeneral domain.
The default search domain is "general", which is the large majority of all Talk pages, and displays the links found in template{{find general sources}}. The search domain is determined automatically by the template, depending on the presence of the correspondingWikiProject. If an article belongs toWikiProject Medicine, it is in the medical search domain by default; if it belongs toWikiProject Video games, it is in the video game search domain by default. (If it is in both, then the highest domain in the list above is chosen; i.e, 'medical'.)
By default, these links do not appear outside ofarticle Talk space (ns=1).
Within article Talk space, the "find sources" links may be suppressed by setting parameter|hide_find_sources=yes.
Modifying the "find sources" query terms
The find sources links use the article title by default as the search term and forms an "exact search" (or "double-quoted query")[o] from the title. If the article title containsparenthetical disambiguation portion, this is appended after the exact search query term, as an additional, unquoted phrase.
In place of the default, the query terms may be specified by using|search_term= (alias:|search_term1=) to specify the exact search string. Parameter|search_term2= may be added to specify additional, unquoted query terms, as many as desired.
Search domain override
The default domain chosen by automatic WikiProject detection may be overridden using param|search-domain=:
|search-domain=medical – usemedical as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias:med)
|search-domain=video game – usevideo games as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias:video, andvg))
|search-domain=general – usegeneral as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias:gen)
The parameter alias|domain= may be used instead; thus,|domain=med means the same thing as|search-domain=medical.
Archives
Thearchives section of the Talk header occupies the bottom of the Talk header box. It consists of (up to) three portions:
The first and last portions are displayed automatically at the bottom of this template when used on a talk page that has archives that arenamed in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no archive links or search box is displayed. The archive bot notice is only displayed if parameters are manually added.
Parameters|noarchive=yes and|search=no are available to suppress the links to Talk archive pages and to the search box. There can be an automatic§ archive bot notice adjacent to the archive links.
If Talk page archives exist and are named in thestandard sequential way, using either a numeric sequence or the alphabetic system with names like /Archive A, or with yearly archives of the format /Archive 2025, links to all of the archive pages are displayed. If this template cannot find any archives because they are not named the standard sequential way, it will behave as if no archive pages exist.
|noarchive=yes suppresses links to archives.
For archives using numeric sequencing, the archive links look like this (example shown is forTalk:Europe):
A link to the archive index is included in the list if it exists and has the standard name "/Archive index". There is no parameter to independently suppress this.
Archive bot notice
The talk header offers an archive bot notice containing the text "Auto-archiving period" at the right for informational purposes. It does not set up automatic archiving, it merely reports what type of archiving has been set up, if any. For instructions on how to configure Talk page archiving, seeHelp:Archiving a talk page. If archiving has been set up, it is reported automatically from the archive configuration data on the page. An example is given just above, showing an archiving period of 180 days.
For archiving bots that use hours as the default units, values over 23 are converted to days, rounded to the nearest half-day, so that a config parameter of|age=4320 for such a bot will result in the same 180-day example as shown above. In these cases, the tooltip pop-up value remains denominated in hours.
Note: Formerly, four parameters[1] were available for users to configure the bot notice manually; however, the bot notice is now generated automatically directly from the archive config data. The four parameters are therefore no longer required, and should not be used.
Search box
The archive search box may be used to search the Talk page archives, and is displayed automatically at the bottom of this template just below thearchive page links, when used on a talk page that has archives that arenamed in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no search box is displayed.
Parameter|search=no may be used to suppress the search box and the archive links.
If present, the search box appears below theArchiving links, and is the last element to appear in the template:
In this working example, entering search terms searches the talk page archives of the articleEurope.
Suppressing links or search box
By default, the Talk header template displays a list ofarchive links, if any archives are present. Parameter|noarchive=yes may be used to suppress the list.
By default, the template displays anarchive search box if any archives are present. Parameter|search=no may be used to suppress display of the archive search box. Note that, in particular|search=yes has no effect, and will not place a search box on a talk page that has no archives.
Additional and replacement text
Besides the four main sections of the talk header box, the template provides three parameters which may be used to include additional sections or modified text:
|bottom=
|custom header=
|wp=.
bottom
|bottom=yes – adds a message above the main talk header box, separately bordered, about where to place new discussions:
Please place new discussions at the bottom of the talk page.
custom_header
|custom_header=your text here – adds any desired text above the main talk header. Text is in boldface by default, and has a horizontal rule below, separating it from the rest of the content.
Example
Showing|custom_header= with the first line ofLorem ipsum text:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
If used together with|bottom=: the "New discussions placement" text appears above everything in a separately bordered box; the main talk header box is below that, and the custom text appears in the main box, above thenewbie andarticle policy links and separated from them by a horizontal rule.
wp
|wp=yes – Extends the bolded lead sentence of the header, to add the words "Pagename and anything related to its purposes and tasks" as follows:
This is the talk page for discussingPagename and anything related to its purposes and tasks.
For testing and demonstration purposes, this template accepts parameter|demospace= which enables testing of the find sources opt-out parameter|hide_find_sources= from other namespaces.
If|demospace= has the valuemain or the value1 it returns the findsources text it would normally return when transcluded frommainspace.
If|demospace= has any other value such as the name of some other namespace it returns the text it would if transcluded outside of mainspace.
If the parameter is empty or undefined, the actual page type determines the result.
This template uses up to 23expensive parser functions (during 2025, with it increasing by one a year) depending on what parameters are used. In theory, on pages with very large numbers of other templates using expensive parser functions this could result intemplate limits being reached, but this is very unlikely. It could also affect expansion of templates on a test page that has more than 21 uncollapsed invocations of this template, especially ones appearing lower on the page.
^See the top of thetalk page for the banner with links to previous TfDs.
^Use|bottom=yes to add additional instructions above the talk header box to "place new discussions at the bottom of the talk page"; seedetails here.
^To add customized text in the talk header box, use|custom_header=Your custom text; seedetails here.
^Designed for use on project (Wikipedia namespace) talk pages, parameter|wp=yes may be used to alter the intro line of the banner ("This is the talk page for...") in order to add "and anything related to its purposes and tasks". Detailshere.
^To display a custom page title, use|display_title=custom page title.
^To force inclusion of the "Article policies" section of the template in non-article namespaces where they are normally excluded, use|arpol=yes. (See§ Article policies below for an example.)
^Up to fiveshortcuts may be added to the template, asunnamed parameters, or as named ones (any of|1=,|sc=,|sc1=,|shortcut= or|shortcut1=, then|2=,|sc2= or|shortcut2=, etc., work). For example,{{Talk header|WP:SHOR|WP:TCUT}}. They display similar to the{{shortcut}} template, but within the Talk header message box.
^To override the search domain chosen automatically by the template, use|search-domain=domain value. See details at§ Search domain override.
^Archive links and an archive search box are displayed automatically at the bottom of the template. Use parameter|noarchive=yes to suppress display of the archive links and search box. See section§ Archives below.
^To suppress the archive search box from the template, use|search=no; see section§ Search box for details.
^Exact search is also known as a "double-quoted query" because major search engines interpret paired double-quote characters as indicating that everything between the double quotes must be found exactly as specified.
