This template employs intricate features of template syntax.
You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with its setup and parser functions before editing the template. If your edit causes unexpected problems, please undo it quickly, as this template may appear on a large number of pages.
Remember that you can conduct experiments, and should test all improvements, in either the general Template sandbox or your user space before changing anything here.
Many users state that when they get a message, they will respond on your talk page instead of on their own. This makes reading back a conversation quite cumbersome; having to switch talk pages back and forth in order to make sense of the conversation. To this end, you can use this template to notify a user that you have responded to his/her message on your own talk page.
Originally, this template was meant to be placed on top of the recipient user talk page. Currently, however this template is placed under a new section at the bottom of the recipient user talk page. To use this template to inform your intended Wikipedian of a message on your talk page:
Go to the target talk page. User talk pages start with "User talk:" prefix.
On the top of the page, click on "New Section" button/link. It should look like this:
In the "Subject/headline" box, type "Re: [[User talk:username#section]]", where "username" is your username (without "User:" prefix) and "section" is the name of the section in your talk page in which you have posted a reply.
In the message section, enter one of the following:
Simple form: This is the simplest way to use this template:
Instead of five tildes (~~~~~), you can enter any date and time.
Save the page.
Wikipedia will notify the recipient of having a new message in his talk page. When he visits his talk page, he should see your notice and (hopefully) follow the link to your user talk page.
Hello, Talkback. You have new messages at Sandbox's talk page. Message added 12:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
So, what if you had another reply for the same user in the same topic? In case you think that the recipient has not visited your user talk page since you inserted the {{Talkback}} notice, simply do nothing. On the other hand, if the discussion continued and you think the recipient must once again read what you have posted, you can simply do one of the following:
Do nothing. Most of the time, Wikipedians keep their correspondents' user talk pages in their watchlists and will see when another reply is posted.
Update the ts parameter. Simply edit the recipient's user talk page and replace the time and date in the ts parameter with a new time and date (or with ~~~~~). This will notify the user.
Add another {{Talkback}} in the same section under the first one. However, the recipient user might find this obtrusive.
