Wikipedia:User talk page
 | This page is a guideline on the Simple English Wikipedia. Many editors agree with the ideas on this page. It is a good idea to follow it, but it is not policy. You can change the page as needed, but please use the talk page to make sure that other editors agree with any big changes. |
 | This guideline in a nutshell: User pages are for communication between editors. While you can personalize and manage your user pages, they are community project pages, not a personal website, blog, or social networking medium. Keep all messages civil. |
A talk page is a page where you send a message to a user. A user talk page is a kind of talk page that has the user's user name at the end of the "User talk:" part. For example, if your user name is "Blahblahblah", your user talk page is "User talk:Blahblahblah".
You do not have to sign up to Wikipedia and get a user name to have a talk page. For example, if you are editing Wikipedia from a computer with the Internet Protocol (IP) address 1.2.3.4, your talk page is "User talk:1.2.3.4". However, other editors who also edit Wikipedia from the same IP address will also have the same talk page. You may therefore find messages on the talk page that are not meant for you. If a certain IP address is used to vandalize (deliberately mess up or write nonsense on) Wikipedia articles, it may be blocked. You will then not be able to edit Wikipedia from that IP address until the block expires. That is why it is a good idea to get your own user name by signing up to Wikipedia. Another reason is that other editors are likely to trust you more if you have a user name.
You will know you have new messages on your user talk page if you see a message box at the top of your computer screen that looks like this:
A person may put a message on your user talk page for one or more of the following reasons:
- A welcome (if you are a new user).
- You made some edits on a page as a test – someone will probably tell you that your test was successful, and that in future you should do tests in a sandbox. This is because you should not make nonsense changes to Wikipedia articles for a joke or just to see if it works.
- You have vandalized a page, or have done something else wrong.
- Your bot is out of control (this is only for people who run bots).
- You have been blocked from editing.
- A user needs to talk to you for some other reason.