Help:Patrolling Talk pages

When patrolling Discussion/Talk pages, after ensuring that the policies and guidelines are followed and marking the edits as patrolled, we are also looking for:


 * Questions that patrons ask
 * Problems, concerns, or requests for additional discussion
 * Trends that may indicate larger concerns or issues to resolve

Questions that patrons ask

 * If the question is about the information in the main article:
 * Answer the question if you know the answer. Once it's answered, add the helpme-helped template to the page above the question.
 * If you don't know the answer, ask the Patrolling team for their thoughts.
 * If together you can't answer the question, the helpme template will tag the question so it can be reviewed and we can make sure it gets an answer later.
 * If the question is not about the information in the main article, such as a research or product question, it doesn't belong on this page.
 * Add a note to refer the patron to the forums to ask their question.
 * Add the helpme template to the page.
 * Once the patron asks their question on the forum, delete the entire question from this page.
 * After a patron has been helped, change the helpme template to helpme-helped.

Problems, concerns or requests for additional discussion

 * Problems or concerns generally require discussion among those who are actively editing the related page. If you see one of these:
 * Add the unresolved template to the page, just above the comment.
 * Feel free to chime in on the discussion if you would like to add your thoughts.
 * Depending on the importance/urgency of the issue, if time goes by with no resolution, you might suggest that the individual go ahead and make the changes they suggested, or encourage them to contact a major contributor of the page in question.
 * When the issue has been resolved, change the unresolved template to resolved.

Trends or larger issues

 * If the item shows a problem or trend that may indicate larger issues, bring it up to the patrolling team to discuss.

Patrolling Discussion pages process

 * The following diagram shows what templates to use for patron questions: