Template:FAQ page: Difference between revisions

Below are answers to frequently asked questions about the corresponding page Template:FAQ page. They address concerns, questions, and misconceptions which have repeatedly arisen on the talk page. Please update this material when needed.

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This page-top banner template is for Wikipedia-internal FAQ pages. By default, it is set up for very short FAQs that are usually found in a talk namespace as subpages of a main talk page, into which they are then transcluded (with {{FAQ}}) as collapse-boxed information at the top, near project banners and other notices. There are some parameters for customizing the template for additional uses. This template is intended but not required to be used with {{FAQ row}} to format the questions and answers.

Important notes

Wikipedia does not support subpages of articles in mainspace. If you created a mainspace path with a "/" in it (e.g. Foo/Bar), this would a separate article (not a subpage "Bar" of article "Foo"), and it must thus comply with all policies and guidelines governing articles.
Thus, if you are creating a FAQ page pertaining to an article and its editing history, it must be in the "Talk:" namespace, not in mainspace. E.g., if the article is Nocturnal underwater basketweaving, try Talk:Nocturnal underwater basketweaving/FAQ.
As a matter of clear policy, Wikipedia does not permit "how-to" or "advice" material and does not publish original thought of any kind, as part of the encyclopedia. This effectively constrains FAQ pages in "Talk:", "Wikipedia:", and most other namespaces to being about the editing and discussion history of the pages to which FAQ pages pertain. It is not permissible to write up something like a FAQ on C++ coding tricks or trivia about your favorite movie, and associate such material in any way with an article or its talk page. See also WP:TALK and WP:NOT#FORUM: the purpose of article talk pages is discussion among editors toward article improvement, not debates and musing about the subject of the article.
Wikipedia cannot be used as a web host or private blog. Even in WP:USERSPACE, FAQ pages must pertain directly to Wikipedia and its encyclopedic purpose. So, your personal opinions about C++ or movie trivia do not belong on Wikipedia at all.
Most internal pages with editorial advice about Wikipedia itself (which are permissible) are written simply as prose essays. They do not have the force of policies or guidelines. If you create a FAQ (which will be subcategorized as a form of essay), it should actually consist of questions that are frequently asked, with answers to them that are compatible with Wikipedia policy, processes, and community norms. Otherwise is it not a Wikipedia FAQ and should not be using this banner template, but something else such as {{Essay}} so that it is not misleading or miscategorized.

Usage

Basic

For a stand-alone FAQ page: {{FAQ page}}

For such a page with shortcuts: {{FAQ page|WP:SC1|WP:SC2}}

For a FAQ that is intended to be transcluded into another page: <noinclude>{{FAQ page}}</noinclude> (this will suppress display of this banner in the transcluding page, but preserve it and its auto-categorization on the FAQ's own page).

Parameters

All are optional, and some are mutually exclusive.

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|sc1=, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|shortcut1=, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|1=, or 1st unnamed parameter – Can be used to supply a shortcut name (e.g. WP:FOOFAQ), without wikilinking. It will be linked for you. Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|sc1=WP:FOOFAQ
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|sc2=, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|shortcut2=, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|2=, or 2nd unnamed parameter – Can be used to supply another shortcut name (e.g. WP:FAQFOO)
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|sc3=, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|shortcut3=, <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|3=, or 3rd unnamed parameter – Can be used to supply another shortcut name (e.g. WP:FOOQ&A)
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|page= – Will replace the link after "the corresponding page" with whatever page name you provide (do not wikilink it, as the template will do that for you). This parameter is mutually exclusive with <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|about=. Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|Template:Cite news= (which might be used for a FAQ at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Cite news FAQ, because all of the talk pages of the citation templates (e.g. Template talk:Cite news) redirect to Help talk:Citation Style 1). Because this template assumes by default that it is in a talk namespace and auto-links here to the corresponding non-talk version of the page name, this parameter can be used to fix the circular link when both the FAQ and the corresponding page are in the same namespace. For more complex situations, see the next option.
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|about= – Will replace the text "the corresponding page" and the link following it, with whatever free-form material you supply. Any needed linking must be done manually. This parameter is mutually exclusive with <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|about=. Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|about=the complex interaction between the [[WP:ABOUTSELF]] policy, the [[WP:Biographies of living persons]] ([[WP:BLP]]) policy, and the [[MOS:IDENTITY]] guideline
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|where= – Will replace the text "on the talk page" with whatever free-form text you provide. Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|where=during years of debates on talk pages of requests for adminship, about appropriateness of certain kinds of voter comments.
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|where2= – Will replace the text "in the talk page" and the link following it, with whatever free-form material you supply. Any needed linking must be done manually. Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|where2=in the archives of [[Wikipedia talk:Notability]], and the talk pages of the early proposals listed at [[Wikipedia:Notability/Historical]]
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|demo=yes , <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|demo=y, or <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline style="display: none;" />|demo=true – Will suppress categorization. Please use this parameter when illustrating examples of the template, or pre-applying it in sandboxed drafts of FAQs. For a FAQ that is ready and should be categorized, this entire parameter should be removed, though setting it to a negative value will also work.

See use of this template at Wikipedia:Manual of Style extended FAQ for a "live" example of many of these features at once.

Categorization

This template categorizes pages into one of the following categories, depending on the namespace the template is used in:

Category:Wikipedia article FAQs (when used in the "Talk" namespaces)
Category:Wikipedia FAQs (when used in the "Wikipedia", "Wikipedia talk", "Help", "Help talk", and many other functional namespaces and their associated talk namespaces)
Category:User essays (when used in the "User" or "User talk" namespaces)

It will not be categorized at all if mistakenly put into a namespace that should not contain such a page, e.g. the main (article) namespace, "Module", "File", "Mediawiki", and some others. It might be best if the template threw a big red error in such a case, but it is not presently coded to do so.

Formatting the Q&A

The template {{FAQ row|q=... |a=...}} can optionally be used to easily lay out the questions and answers, with each answer collapsed until someone clicks "[show]" to expose it. This produces a very compact list of questions that serves as its own table of contents. The template can handle a wide variety of embedded wikimarkup. Parameters can be used to not auto-collapse the answers, and to custom number the question and answers.

Example (without customization parameters), from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/FAQ:

Why does the Manual of Style recommend straight (keyboard-style) instead of curly (typographic) quotation marks and apostrophes (i.e., the characters " and ', instead of “, ”, ‘, and ’)?

Users may only know how to type in straight quotes (such as " and ') when searching for text within a page or when editing. Not all Web browsers find curly quotes when users type straight quotes in search strings.

</syntaxhighlight>

produces: