A talk page, or discussion page is used in wiki collaboration to contain discussion about the contents of its associated main page.
In the first wiki released to the public in 1995, Ward's Wiki, topic and discussion shared the same page.
MediaWiki
In the MediaWiki wiki software each article or other content page has a corresponding talk page. The purpose of these pages is for people who contribute to a single page to discuss changes to the content, such as why changes were made or were rolled back, and to resolve disagreements amongst themselves. The purpose of having a discussion page is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content.
Each account on a MediaWiki wiki has its own user page, which, like the article pages, has its own talk page. This talk page is a means of communication with other users of the wiki. However, there is no restriction in the software that talk pages must be used in that fashion.
, a wiki that uses MediaWiki, makes particular use of talk pages for separating the internal workings of article development from the encyclopaedia articles themselves. The primary purpose of a talk page (also referred to as a /Talk page) is to improve the contents of the corresponding article, from an encyclopaedic point of view. Questions, challenges, excised text (due to confusion or bias, for example), arguments relevant to changing the text, and commentary on the article are typically placed on the talk page.
Sometimes, the editing of article pages is disabled at , with notices in the article referring users to the article's discussion page. Talk pages are also used to publicly recognize good articles, or good editing.
Some other conventions apply to talk pages on :
*When someone says "this page" on a talk page, they are usually referring to the main page that the talk page is associated with, rather than the actual talk page itself.
*Piped links and shortcuts to policy, guideline, and instructional pages are common on talk pages.
*Talk pages generally do not have standard sections at the bottom for footnotes, "see also" links, external links, and so forth. So citations must be placed within the body of a talk page comment.
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