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NOTE: The text of this template varies by namespace.

This template is a signpost. It displays a talk page message box with four sections of content:

• § Intro – a short introduction and appropriate links for newcomers
• § Policies – a reminder of important policies for experienced users
• § "Find sources links" – a set of links to aid in finding reliable sources for the article topic
• § Archives – a list of links to the current talk page's archives, and a search box to search them

Portions of the standard boilerplate text may be modified with params that specify additional or replacement text.

Usage

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext"></syntaxhighlight>

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 all of Wikipedia's approx. 0 million potential talk pages. This template should not be indiscriminately added to pre-existing talk pages, especially not by using bots. That said, the template should not be removed from talk pages simply because it is there.

For more information on this topic, see the talk page for this template, including the talk archives and the TfD logs.

A further consideration is when this template is added solely or chiefly for its ability to display the archive list and search box. Both this template and the {{Archives}} template contain the functionality (enabled by default) to display the archive list and search box (for pages where archives are detected). Do not replace an existing {{Archives}} template with this template without other justification.

Avoid the duplication of the archive list and search box: either don't use the {{Archives}} template at all, or turn off archive display for this template. One reason for using {{Archives}} even on talk pages with a {{Talk header}} template could be when the templates at the top of the talk page become so long as to be unwieldy – in that case you might consider moving the archive-related information "off to the side" using {{Archives}}.

The two commonly used archive bots are ClueBot III and lowercase sigmabot III (see H:CHOOSEBOT). ClueBot III offers a built-in third option to display the archive list and search box, see its <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|archivebox=yes parameter. Again, please avoid displaying the archive list and search box multiple times.

Parameters

Full syntax – Vertical

{{Talk header | bottom= | custom_header= | wp= | display_title= | arpol= | sc1= | sc2= | sc3= | sc4= | sc5= | demospace= | hide_find_sources= | search_term1= | search_term2= | search-domain= | noarchive= | search= }}

Horizontal

{{Talk header |bottom= |custom_header= |wp= |display_title= |arpol= |sc1= |sc2= |sc3= |sc4= |sc5= |demospace= |hide_find_sources= |search_term1= |search_term2= |search-domain= |noarchive= |search= }}

Hiding the template

Registered users who prefer not to see this template on any talk page may hide it from view. This would affect only your account and nothing is changed for anybody else. You will need to have a registered account to do this kind of personalization.

1. Edit your user style page at Special:Mypage/common.css.
2. Add a line: <syntaxhighlight lang=css inline>#talkheader {display:none;}</syntaxhighlight>
3. Save the change.
4. Bypass your cache.

Do note that archiving information (the § Archives section) is more and more commonly shown through this template as opposed to through a freestanding template such as {{Archives}}. To only hide the intro/newcomer links and talk page policies, but leave the find sources and archive sections visible, instead use the line: <syntaxhighlight lang=css copy>#talkheader tr:has(> td > .talkheader-body) { display:none; }</syntaxhighlight>

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 the top, and explains which parameters are available to modify their appearance.

If the template is used in a SUBJECTSPACE talk page, then a WP:NOTFORUM line, "This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article", is added immediately below the very top line.

Intro and newcomer links

Basic tips for newcomers appear in the top left and are boxed with a white background (or a black background in dark mode). This includes links for how to get help and a button to start a new topic in new section at the bottom of the page. The intro links are displayed in the top left portion of the message box:

Policies

Talk page policies

A bullet list of policies, and behavioral and talk page guidelines is included by default in the top right portion of the message box.

Article policies

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.

In non-article namespaces, the "Article policies" box is absent by default, but it may be added via <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|arpol=yes. For example:

{{talk header|arpol=yes}}

Note: The only recognized value for <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|arpol= is "yes". In particular, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|arpol=no has no effect on header display in any namespace. The article policies may be suppressed from view in all namespaces by adding <syntaxhighlight lang=css inline>#talkheader .talkheader-policies{display:none}</syntaxhighlight> to your common.css (see #Hiding the template for more on such personalization).

"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 of Template:Find sources; see Talk:Europe for an example. These links appear after the initial article policies and links for newcomers, and above the archiving section. For the article Europe, it looks like this:

Background

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 on WikiProject membership of the article and may correspond to one of these:

• {{find medical sources}} – for articles in the medical search domain
• {{find video game sources}} – for articles in the video game search domain
• {{find general sources}} – the default, for everything else, is the general 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 corresponding WikiProject. If an article belongs to WikiProject Medicine, it is in the medical search domain by default; if it belongs to WikiProject 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'.)

Example

For the page Talk:Giardiasis, which belongs to WP:WikiProject Medicine, it looks like this:

You can modify the nature of the source links displayed by § Hiding the links, § modifying the query terms, or by § modifying the search domain.

Hiding the links

By default, these links do not appear outside of article Talk space (ns=1).

Within article Talk space, the "find sources" links may be suppressed by setting parameter <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|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") from the title. If the article title contains parenthetical 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 <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search_term= (alias: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search_term1=) to specify the exact search string. Parameter <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|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 <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search-domain=:

• <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search-domain=medical – use

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__ as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias:

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__)

• <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search-domain=video game – use

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__ as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias:

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__, and

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__))

• <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search-domain=general – use

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__ as the search domain, regardless what projects it belongs to (value alias:

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__)

The parameter alias <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|domain= may be used instead; thus, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|domain=med means the same thing as <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search-domain=medical.

Archives

The archives section of the Talk header occupies the bottom of the Talk header box. This template does not control or initiate any form of archiving; it merely detects if any archiving has been done (that uses the standard naming convention). See Help:Archiving a talk page, both for instructions on how to manually archive a talk page and how to set up automated archiving. The archive section consists of two portions:

• a set of links to Talk page archives, possibly including an archive bot notice
• an archive search box

The section is displayed automatically at the bottom of this template when used on a talk page that has archives that are named in the standard way. If no archives exist for the current talk page, or if they have non-standard names, no archives section is displayed. The archive bot notice is displayed if the set of links to archives is displayed and a valid archive bot configuration section is present.

The <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|noarchive=yes parameter suppresses the set of links to archives.

The <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search=no parameter suppresses the archive search box.

Use {{Talk header|noarchive=yes|search=no}} to turn off the entire Archives section (such as when an {{Archives}} template is present on the same talk page)

If the template cannot detect any archives (possibly because they are not named in the standard way), the Archives section is not displayed. If the template cannot detect a valid archive bot configuration section (possibly because any archives were created manually), or no set of links to archives is displayed, the archive bot notice is not displayed.

Links to archives

If Talk page archives exist and are named in the standard sequential way, using either a numeric sequence or the alphabetic system with names like /Archive A, or with yearly archives of the format /Archive 2026, 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.

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|noarchive=yes suppresses links to archives.

For archives using numeric sequencing, the archive links look like this (example shown is for Talk: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 set of links to archives 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 configured, if any. For instructions on how to set up automated Talk page archiving, see Help:Archiving a talk page. If archiving has been set up, it is reported automatically from the archive configuration data on the page. In the example above the archiving period is 92 days but reported as "3 months" because the template prefers units that result in relatively small values for readability over the units understood by archive bots.

In desktop view, the words "Auto-archiving period" have a dotted underline indicating the presence of a tooltip. In the example above, the tooltip text is: "Topics with timestamps are automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III 3 or more at a time after 92 days of inactivity when more than 5 threads are present." Tooltips are not visible to users of the Wikipedia:mobile app.

Note: Formerly, four parameters were available for users to configure the bot notice manually; however, the bot notice is now generated automatically directly from the archive config data.

Search box

The archive search box may be used to search the Talk page archives, and is displayed automatically when used on a talk page that has archives that are named 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 <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|search=no may be used to suppress the search box.

If present, the search box appears below the Archiving 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 article Europe.

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:

• <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|bottom=
• <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|custom header=
• <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|wp=.

bottom

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|bottom=yes – adds a message above the main talk header box, separately bordered, about where to place new discussions:

custom_header

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|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 <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|custom_header= with the first line of Lorem ipsum text:

If used together with <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|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 the newbie and article policy links and separated from them by a horizontal rule.

wp

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|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 parameter should not be used outside of the Wikipedia talk namespace.

Testing issues

Find sources testing

For testing and demonstration purposes, this template accepts parameter <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|demospace= which enables testing of the find sources opt-out parameter <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|hide_find_sources= from other namespaces.

• If <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|demospace= has the value

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__ or the value

1. REDIRECT Template:Parameter value

__EXPECTSHORTPAGE__ it returns the findsources text it would normally return when transcluded from mainspace.

• If <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|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.

The dynamic features of WikiProject autodetection and § Search domain override depend on the article title where it appears, and therefore cannot be tested in the normal way. The test cases page provides an explanation of how to test these features using Special:ExpandTemplates with the ContextTitle enabled, or by using in situ testing.

Expensive parser functions

This template uses up to 24 expensive parser functions (during 2026, 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 in template limits being reached, but this is very unlikely. It could also affect expansion of templates on a test page that has more than 20 uncollapsed invocations of this template, especially ones appearing lower on the page.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Talk header in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Talk header

<templatedata> { "params": { "1": { "aliases": [ "shortcut", "shortcut1", "sc", "sc1" ], "label": "Shortcut", "description": "Shortcut that displays similar to the template, but within the Talk header message box", "example": "WP:SHOR", "type": "wiki-page-name", "suggested": true }, "2": { "aliases": [ "shortcut2", "sc2" ], "label": "Shortcut 2", "description": "A second shortcut", "type": "wiki-page-name" }, "bottom": { "description": "Set to \"yes\" to add additional instructions at the top to \"please place new discussions at the bottom of the talk page\"", "type": "boolean", "suggestedvalues": [ "yes" ] }, "custom_header": { "label": "Custom header", "description": "Replaces the entire header with customized text", "type": "line" }, "wp": { "label": "WikiProject?", "description": "For use on WikiProject talk pages; set to \"yes\" to add \"and anything related to its purposes and tasks\" to the header", "type": "boolean" }, "display_title": { "label": "Display title", "description": "Displays a custom page title", "type": "string" }, "arpol": { "label": "Article policies", "description": "Adds a link to the article policy pages", "type": "boolean", "default": "On for article talk pages, off otherwise" }, "demospace": { "label": "demospace", "description": "Namespace number or name for testing purposes", "type": "string" }, "hide_find_sources": { "label": "Hide find sources?", "description": "Set to \"yes\" to hide the find sources banner on article talk pages", "type": "boolean" }, "search_term": { "aliases": [ "search_term1" ], "label": "Search term", "description": "Changes the search term used in the Find sources: Google (books⧼Dot-separator⧽news⧼Dot-separator⧽scholar⧼Dot-separator⧽free images⧼Dot-separator⧽WP refs)⧼Dot-separator⧽FENS⧼Dot-separator⧽JSTOR⧼Dot-separator⧽TWL module", "type": "string" }, "search_term2": { "label": "Search term 2", "description": "Adds a second search term for unquoted search, as used in the Find sources: Google (books⧼Dot-separator⧽news⧼Dot-separator⧽scholar⧼Dot-separator⧽free images⧼Dot-separator⧽WP refs)⧼Dot-separator⧽FENS⧼Dot-separator⧽JSTOR⧼Dot-separator⧽TWL module", "type": "string" }, "search-domain": { "aliases": [ "domain" ], "label": "Search domain", "description": "Changes the default search domain used in the Find sources: Google (books⧼Dot-separator⧽news⧼Dot-separator⧽scholar⧼Dot-separator⧽free images⧼Dot-separator⧽WP refs)⧼Dot-separator⧽FENS⧼Dot-separator⧽JSTOR⧼Dot-separator⧽TWL module", "suggestedvalues": [ "medical", "video", "general" ], "type": "string" }, "noarchive": { "aliases": [ "noarchives" ], "label": "No archives?", "description": "Set to \"yes\" to hide the archives links", "type": "boolean", "suggestedvalues": [ "yes" ] }, "search": { "label": "Search", "description": "Set to \"no\" to override the default behavior for the search box appearance", "type": "boolean" } }, "description": "A signpost for the top of talk pages" } </templatedata>

Tracking categories

• Category:Pages using Talk header with unknown parameters (0)

See also

• {{New discussion}}
• {{Portal talk}}
• {{Skip to talk}}
• {{WikiProject banner shell}}
• Wikipedia:Template index/Talk namespace
• Wikipedia:Template index/User talk namespace
• MediaWiki:Talkpagetext

Notes

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Talk header/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.