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Wikipedia:Editnotice

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Editnotices are message boxes shown before the edit window when a user edits a page in desktop mode. Web-based users on mobile devices can also see editnotices, but only if the device or browser software allows JavaScript execution and has JavaScript enabled.[note 1] All users can create editnotices for pages within their own user space. However, only administrators, page movers, and template editors can create or edit editnotices in any other namespace.

To use editnotices, you should have a basic understanding of the concept of Wikipedia namespaces; that is, a set of Wikipedia pages whose names begin with a prefix recognized by the MediaWiki software, followed by a colon, or, in the case of the main namespace, with no prefix.

Some of the message boxes you see when editing a page (or when viewing the source of a protected page) are not editnotices; instead, they are MediaWiki interface messages.

When a page is edited, red or blue links are often displayed at the top right of the page looking like this:

or like this:

They are links to the group and page editnotices of the page. Users with administrator, template editor, or page mover permissions always see both links, even if the notices have not yet been created, since they can create and edit the editnotices. Other users only see the red "Page notice" link on their own user and user talk basepage, since they can create and edit such notices. They also see blue links to group and page notices if they already have been created, so they can find and view the source of the notice. But they still can't edit those notices, except the ones in userspace.

See also the section § Hiding the red links below.

Editnotices

When creating editnotices, the template {{editnotice}} can be used for formatting; see its template page for how to use it. See Category:Editnotice templates for specialized editnotices.

User and user talk

When editing a new user page, {{base userpage editnotice}} will show.

Insert as an editnotice for a user page as {{Editnotice userpage}}.

For example:

This appears on top of the editing box screen when people would like to edit your page. The ExampleUser part will automatically change to your username.

Anyone can create an editnotice for a user or user talk page. (But editnotices for user sub-pages can only be created by admins, template editors, and page movers.) User page editnotice names take one of these forms:

User:Example/Editnotice
User talk:Example/Editnotice

You can create an editnotice for your own user or talk page with a preloaded {{editnotice}} template by using these links:

Create your user page notice
Create your user talk page notice

Other namespaces

Editnotices for other namespaces and for user subpages can be created and edited only by admins, template editors, and page movers. There are three main types of editnotices:

Namespace notices – Displays on all pages within a namespace.
Group notices – Displays on a page and all its subpages.
Page notices – Displays only on the page it belongs to.

Editnotice names take one of these forms:

Namespace notices – See below.
Group notices – Template:Editnotices/Group/<Full page name of the rootpage>
Page notices – Template:Editnotices/Page/<Full page name>

Group notices for subpages must have an {{editnotice subpages}} template on each of the parent group notice pages. For instance, Template:Editnotices/Group/User:Example/test would require Template:Editnotices/Group/User:Example to contain {{editnotice subpages|test}}.

How to request an editnotice

To request the creation of an editnotice:

  • Open the edit window of the page on which you want the editnotice.
  • Place this code on the page: [[{{editnotice talkpagename}}]]
  • Preview the page, and without saving, follow the link you see. Your browser may ask if you wish to continue and lose the changes you made; confirm you do.
  • Open the edit window of the editnotice's talkpage.
  • Add the exact markup you want for the editnotice, and below it write a short request for the person who deals with the request, and sign it.
  • Finally, place this template: {{edit template-protected}} at the top of the editnotice's talkpage, and when you are satisfied that everything is correct (use preview), save the page.

Another way to find the link for an editnotice is to:

  • Open the edit window of the page where you want to create an editnotice.
  • Place this code on the page: [[{{editnotice pagename}}]]
  • Preview the page and follow the link to the editnotice.
  • This takes you to the editnotice's page. The request for creation should be made on the editnotice's talkpage.
  • Once at the talkpage, follow the latter steps in the first instructions.

Batch of identical editnotices

If you need to display a batch of identical editnotices, please create a single template which you then transclude in each editnotice, to allow easier modification and maintenance. You can place such templates in Category:Editnotice templates.

When displayed

Editnotices are displayed when editing a page, but because their content can also be useful when just viewing a page, they are also displayed in these cases:

  • Page notices are displayed on top of .css and .js pages in MediaWiki space. See for instance the notice at the top of MediaWiki:Common.css that begins "This is the CSS for all skins". The namespace notice is not displayed and MediaWiki space doesn't have group notices.
  • In any namespace, when a non-admin "views the source" of a protected page, or an IP-user views the source of a semi-protected page. The group and page notices are displayed, but not the namespace notices.

When the editnotices are shown in "view mode" the loading system feeds them "notice action = view". This can be used inside the editnotices like this:

{{#ifeq: {{{notice action|}}} | view
| <!-- A non-admin is "viewing the source" of a protected page -->
| <!-- A user with sufficient rights is editing the page -->
}}

If you don't want to see the red "Group notice" and "Page notice" links, then add the below markup to your personal CSS, then wait a minute, then bypass your browser cache.

/* Hide the red "Group notice" and "Page notice" links. */
.editnotice-area .editnotice-redlink {
  display: none !important;
}

If you don't want to see any of the "Group notice" and "Page notice" links, then use this markup instead:

/* Hide all the "Group notice" and "Page notice" links. */
.editnotice-area .editnotice-link {
  display: none !important;
}

Notices

When an editnotice is used on an article, people creating editnotices are advised to leave a message on the article's talk page for further discussion of the editnotice on the article.

Listing editnotices

Technical details

Anything put on the pages MediaWiki:Editnotice-0 through MediaWiki:Editnotice-15 (or Editnotice-100 through Editnotice-109) will appear as an editnotice for every page in an entire namespace. Editnotice-0 is for mainspace pages, Editnotice-1 for the talk space pages, Editnotice-2 for user space pages, etcetera. See WP:Namespace for the meaning of all of the numbers.

The template {{editnotice load}} has been put on each of those MediaWiki namespace pages. The template causes each article to use a subpage specific to it as its editnotice rather than using a namespace-wide editnotice.

The editnotice load system uses two methods of storing the editnotices:

Although all of the namespaces could initially store editnotices directly as MediaWiki messages, this was found to cause performance issues as the MediaWiki namespace grew. The display of MediaWiki editnotices for namespaces that have the MediaWiki subpage feature has been disabled; even though an editnotice can be created as a MediaWiki message for these namespaces, it will not show. For consistency, and to keep the MediaWiki namespace clean, all editnotices are now stored as subpages of Template:Editnotices. This means we again can create editnotices for all namespaces.

Group notices stored as Template:Editnotices/Group/... can be created for pages in all namespaces except for the main (article), File (image), and MediaWiki namespaces. The reason is that those namespaces don't have the MediaWiki subpage feature, thus group notices would not be meaningful in those namespaces. The talk spaces of those namespaces understand subpages and can use group notices, although group notices are usually not meaningful there either.

Emailnotice

Emailnotices allow registered users with a confirmed email to display a custom message at Special:EmailUser for their username. Emailnotices are located at Special:MyPage/Emailnotice (uses). The system was implemented in MediaWiki:Emailpagetext after this discussion.

Protection notices

The standard message displayed when the source of a protected page is being viewed may be replaced by creating a page of the form Template:Editnotices/Protection/<Full page name>. When this is done, the standard editnotices for the page will not be displayed by default; display them if necessary by including {{editnotice load|notice action = view}} in the custom protection notice.

This should generally only be used when the standard notice displayed by MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext and/or MediaWiki:Cascadeprotected is misleading users to file {{edit protected}} requests in the wrong place; for example, see the history of Template talk:Reflist prior to September 2011.

History

Editnotices were introduced in r39120, 11 August 2008, MediaWiki 1.14.

This page may not be complete. Here are some links to more information:

Alternatives

An alternative to an editnotice, not requiring any special privileges, is to insert one or more HTML comments into a page. This will be visible when a user is editing the page, but not in the page itself. The comment must be preceded by the characters <!-- and followed by -->.

Creating editnotices

To edit a namespace-wide editnotice, click on the corresponding link below. To create an editnotice for a page, enter the page name and click "Create". For your own User: and User talk: pages, you don't need to type anything, just click "Create".

Page names are case sensitive—if the page shows the first character as capitalized, then it must be capitalized when entered here.

Number Namespace Namespace editnotice Create page editnotice
-1 Special:EmailUser MediaWiki:Emailpagetext
0 Main: (article) Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Main
1 Talk: (article talk) Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Talk
2 User: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/User
3 User talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/User talk
4 Wikipedia: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Wikipedia
5 Wikipedia talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Wikipedia talk
6 File: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/File
7 File talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/File talk
8 MediaWiki: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/MediaWiki
9 MediaWiki talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/MediaWiki talk
10 Template: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Template
11 Template talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Template talk
12 Help: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Help
13 Help talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Help talk
14 Category: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Category
15 Category talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Category talk
100 Portal: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Portal
101 Portal talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Portal talk
118 Draft: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Draft
119 Draft talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Draft talk
710 TimedText: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/TimedText
711 TimedText talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/TimedText talk
828 Module: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Module
829 Module talk: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Module talk

Notes

  1. ^ See Wikipedia:Mobile communication bugs for more information.

See also