Q-BPM:How to Use Discussion Pages

This page explains how to use discussion pages.

Overview of Discussion Page
All articles in Q-BPM are accompanied by discussion pages used for discussion about the corresponding article. Discussion pages are not supposed to be used for chat or feedback, but are used to arrive at an agreement about the direction of editing, to suggest issues to be considered, and above all to create good articles.

If you have new information that you can add to existing articles, please do not hesitate to edit pages without worrying so much about format or layout. However, in case there are many people participating in editing, discussion pages are useful to divide tasks and to reach an agreement from various perspectives.

Format of Discussion Page
When a "Discussion" tag on the top of each page is clicked, the corresponding discussion page is displayed.

The way to edit discussion pages is exactly the same as the way to edit other pages in Q-BPM. If you add a new comment to the discussion page, please create a new paragraph below the existing contents.

If some discussions are already done in the discussion page, it is helpful to add a new header, as shown in the example below, so that discussion topics are easily distinguished.

==XXX in Chinese Characters==

In order to clarify by whom each comment is made, please make a signature at the end of the comment when you add your comment in the discussion page. By placing three tildes (" ") at the end of the comment, only a user name is automatically inserted. Moreover, if four tildes (" ~ ") are used, the timestamp of the submission is inserted in addition to a user name. Unless you have any special reasons, please make a signature including the timestamp.

If you write a follow-up comment for someone else's, please use indentations so that it is clearly understood that your comments is following up someone else's. Indentation can be done by placing a half-width colon (" : ") at the head of each comment. (If you add a new paragraph in your comment, a colon must be placed also at the head of the new paragraph.) In case you add another comment to that follow-up comment, you need to use two half-width colons at the head of the comment, if you further add a comment, three colons are required, and so forth. The number of colons corresponds to the level of indentations.

It is not desirable to continue lengthy discussion more than that, but when necessary, please repeat the same pattern as above. (However, too many indentations make the comment less comprehensible and would increase the number of lines in each comment, so it is recommended to go back to a paragraph without a colon at some timing in such cases.)

User-Discussion Page
Discussion pages corresponding to "user pages" are called "user-discussion pages" and are sometimes used for the different purpose. The most distinguishing difference is that user-discussion pages can be used to leave personal messages to the corresponding user. However, please note that a user-discussion page can be accessed by everyone, and thereby everyone can read the message left on the page. (Thus, it is not recommended to leave a very private message.) In addition, if you intend to write a message related to discussion about articles, please use discussion pages corresponding to the articles instead of each user's discussion page.

Etiquette When Using Discussion Page
There is etiquette about discussion page usage, which has been conventionally formed through the usage of discussion pages so far. Some manners are listed below.


 * Unlike the case of other types pages in Q-BPM, it is considered impolite to modify other user's comments even if there were typos or grammar errors.
 * However, it is totally fine to modify your own comments. So, if you find some typos or grammar errors in your own comments, please feel free to fix them.
 * In case you emotionally wrote an aggressive comment but regret it after you calm down, you can also modify the comment.
 * On the other hand, if you received an annoying comment and later the user that made the comment changed it to more gentlemanlike or constructive one, please forget the unpleasant feeling caused by the past comment.
 * If someone else has already made a follow-up comment to yours, you should not erase the comment even though it was made by yourself. That is because it would look somewhat weird and foolish if only the answer remains without your original comment, which the answer is made for.