Wikipedia:Editnotice

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcuts WP:EDN WP:EDNO

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.

For a substantial amount of edit notices, the following is not seen by the average user.

When a page is edited, red or blue links are - for certain types of users - often displayed at the top right of the page looking like this (look to the extreme right of your browser window, the following line is not blank):

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 generally don't see them at all, except on their own user and user talk basepage, where they only see the red "Page notice" link, 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.

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.

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

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

For example:

Editing Hello. You're editing the userpage of ExampleUser. Please make your edits friendly, as this is a userpage and is supposed to be edited only by the user!

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. However, editnotices for user sub-pages can be created only by administrators, 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

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}}.

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.

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.

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;
}

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.

Better is if the editnotice features blue and visible editnotice links as explained above, since anyone can then reach them (and their associated talk pages), even long after any messages left during creation have since been archived.

• Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Editnotice – The main MediaWiki namespace notices, and any lingering MediaWiki page notices.
• Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Editnotices – All templates and sub-templates with names beginning with "Template:Editnotices...".
• Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Editnotice – Pages that use the {{editnotice}} template.

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:

• For User and User talk space the editnotice is stored as a subpage of the user or talk page named /Editnotice. This method allows users to edit these notices.
• For all other namespaces and for user sub-pages the editnotice is stored as a subpage of Template:Editnotices. All subpages of Template:Editnotices are protected by MediaWiki:Titleblacklist so that only admins, template editors, and page movers can create and edit them.

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.

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.

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 be used only 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.

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

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

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-08-11/Technology report#New features – The announcement about editnotices.
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 46#Custom edit messages – An archived discussion about editnotices.
• [1] – You can search for any pages that mention the editnotice system.

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 -->.

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.

• {{editnotice}} – A template for making editnotices.
• {{editnotice pagename}} – Returns the pagename for the editnotice for the current page.
• {{editnotice talkpagename}} – Returns the talkpage name for the editnotice for the current page.
• {{editnotice explanation}} – For editnotice talk pages. Explains how editnotices are protected, and optionally shows a CSS customization parameter.
• {{editnotice load}} – The template that is doing most of the editnotice loading and also displays the small "Group notice" and "Page notice" links.
• {{editnotice userpage}} – For use on userpages.
• {{Ds/editnotice}} – For notifying about discretionary sanctions

• Help:Edit summary – on the need to summarise edits to mainspace pages