Template:Unresolved/doc

Purpose
This template should be rarely used. The purpose of the "unresolved" tag is to give a visual hint to readers of talk page items that a topic contains important unresolved issues, most commonly an action or change that has been agreed to by consensus but not yet actually dealt with, or a consensus discussion that failed to reach agreement, but needs to go one way or another to solve an extant problem or resolve a conflict with policy. Its intended uses are to:
 * Be a reminder of important problem-solving that has been on the back burner for too long
 * Warn editors away from manually archiving a topic that still contains uncompleted action items
 * Serve as a marker that is detectable by archive bots, to ignore a topic that should not be archived (no known bots actually support this at this time, as the template is too recent).

It is emphatically not for marking a topic as contentious (which is quite often the case with still-active topics, and no surprise to anyone), marking all un-Resolved topics on a page as needing resolution (the fact that they have no Resolved tag on them is already indication enough), tagging a topic as moribund-before-resolution (see Stale instead), or challenging the marking of a topic as "Resolved" (just remove the Resolved tag, as explained in that template's documentation.)

The "unresolved" tag is not final and does not necessarily re-open, or keep open, a discussion. If the issue really is settled and any action items agreed to by consensus have been performed, or if there is no actual consensus for any such action items, please remove the tag, and replace it with Resolved or Stale, etc., or nothing, as appropriate. In particular, PoV-pushing by abuse of this template (e.g. lone-editor prevention of archival of a discussion no one else is interested in) should be reverted.

This tag can be also used in admin processes to note that an action item reported to a notice board has yet to be dealt with and should be immediately, and can further be of help on user talk pages to sort messages to be retained for continued discussion or followup action, from those Resolved or needing no further followup and ready for archival.

Usage
Place the following under the subject heading of a topic on a talk page:  

To add an additional comment explaining why the issue is unresolved or what action needs to be taken, and/or to sign so that others know who marked the thread as unresolved:

Do include your signature  when stating obvious facts, such as that a question has yet to be answered or that identified errors haven't been corrected, or when it is obvious from the content or context who placed the template. That would lead to pointless clutter, and defeat the purpose of the template as a simple and easy-to-scan label. include your sig at the end of a 1 comment if the label could be controversial (in which case anyone is free to remove it entirely) or attribution is otherwise actually needed, e.g. because of subjective content in the comment. Any editor may add attribution from page history if they think it is important (or remove it where it seems like a useless distraction).

Example
== Notable enthusiasts of the game == Does anyone agree the list is misplaced, not to mention uncredited? More important, to me at least, would be a list of famous players. Can we agree to remove or move that section? &mdash; OneUser123 05:08, 2 July 2007 (UTC) :Yes. To the extent that it remains unsourced, it is actually endangering the main article, as AfDable "original research". &mdash; AnotherUser789 06:42, 3 July 2007 (UTC) ::Agreed, but move or delete? &mdash; OneMoreUser456 13 July 2007 12:14 (UTC) :It's been a month now. We need to do something about this (and to decide precisely what to do). &mdash; OneUser123 09:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC)