Template:Ongoing discussions/doc
This template's documentation was also ported from Wikipedia, originally from Template:Centralized discussion/doc. The original authors of the documentation are shown on the documentation's edit history page.
Wikipedia's text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This template is used to bring attention to active discussions in the Valve Developer Community, particularly discussions which may need consensus or general community attention. It should be placed on prominent community pages and edited when a new discussion is in progress. This is based on Wikipedia's Centralized discussion framework, but it's simplified and less strict to try to meet the needs of a looser community. For more information, see Valve Developer Community:Ongoing discussions.
Note that the actual box used to list the discussions is created by a separate Template:Ongoing discussions/core template.
Adding discussions
To add a new item to the list of ongoing discussions, edit the Template:Ongoing discussions page. HTML comments will indicate where to add new discussions. When adding a new discussion, place it above any other discussions on its respective list. Note that this list is actually a parameter to another template, so the characters = and | cannot be used by default. Use {{=}} and {{!}} if you need to use them. After adding a new discussion to the list, include the date when the link was added in an HTML comment (e.g. <!-- Added 1 January 1970 -->).
Discussions mentioned on this template should link to a specific topic section. The text representing each link should either match up with the talk page section's name or serve as a short summary of the subject, and it should ideally be short enough to fit on one line in a typical screen width. Discussions which branch off of another ongoing discussion can be listed with indentations.
When you are finished adding a new discussion to the template, please include a link to the new discussion in your edit summary so that it could be accessed directly from the edit history and/or a user's watchlist.
Removing discussions
A discussion could be removed from this list if:
- A consensus on the topic is reached, or is no longer needed.
- The discussion hasn't been active in over one month. (this isn't an outright requirement for a discussion to be on the list, just a reason a discussion can be removed)
- The discussion is closed for some other reason.
Usage
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
(category tree)
For all discussion activity, see recent changes to talk pages.
This template can be used as-is without any parameters. By default, it floats to the right and takes up 35% of the page. For example:
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
(category tree)
For all discussion activity, see recent changes to talk pages.
You can also specify a specific width and/or float parameter. For example:
Category tree
The category tree's default depth can be specified with the depth parameter. For example:
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
For all discussion activity, see recent changes to talk pages.
The category tree can also be hidden entirely by typing categorytree=0. For example:
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
For all discussion activity, see recent changes to talk pages.
Compact mode
This template can optionally use a more compact appearance which hides the generic discussion links and hint about recent changes. For example:
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
(category tree)
There's an even more compact version which removes the template links at the bottom:
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
(category tree)
Simple version
A simpler version of this template which inserts the discussion lists as plaintext with no box or formatting can be used with the simple parameter:
(links to general discussions)
(links to meta discussions)
By default, both general and meta discussions are listed. The show parameter can be used to only show general or meta discussions:
(links to general discussions)
Note that the simple version does not use the category tree, although you can define it independently using {{#categorytree:Community maintenance|mode=pages|depth=0|hideroot=1|showcount="on"}}. See MW:Extension:CategoryTree for more information on how this works.