GuildWiki:Sign your comments

'Note: this is an essay about signing your comments on talk pages. It is neither a policy of the GuildWiki, nor a guideline. Unsigned comments are assigned the same value as signed comments.'

Signing your posts on talk pages and other Guildwiki discourse (but not on articles) is not only good etiquette; it also facilitates discussion by helping other users to identify the author of a particular comment, to navigate talk pages, and to address specific comments to the relevant user(s), among other things. Discussion is an important part of collaborative editing as it helps other users to understand the progress and evolution of a work.

The purpose of signatures on Guildwiki
Signatures on Guildwiki


 * identify you as a user, and your contributions to Guildwiki.
 * enable other editors to recognise the user name (or IP) of the person who made a given statement, and the date and time at which it was made
 * encourage civility in discussions by identifying the author of a particular comment

When signatures should be used
Any post made to


 * user talk pages
 * article talk pages
 * other discussion pages

should be signed.

On the other hand, signatures on Guildwiki are not intended to indicate ownership or authorship of any Guildwiki article. Edits to articles or to the Main Page should not be signed. There are certain other instances when posts should not be signed; in these cases, specific instructions are provided to contributors.

How to "sign" your posts
There are two ways to sign your posts:

1. At the end of your comments, simply type four tildes (~), like this:  ~.

2. If you are using the edit toolbar option (which must be enabled under Special:Preferences), click the signature icon (http://gw.gamewikis.org/skins/common/images/button_sig.png) to add the four tildes.

Your signature will appear after you have saved the changes.

The end result is the same in both cases. Typing four tildes will result in the following:

Since typing four tildes adds the time and date to your resulting signature, this is the preferred option for signing your posts in discussions.

Typing three tildes results in the following:

Since this does not date-stamp your signature, you may wish to sign this way when leaving general notices on your user page or user talk page. This is also a convenient shortcut (rather than typing out the full code) when you want to provide a link to your user page.

Typing five tildes will convert to a date stamp with the current date and time, without adding your signature, like this:

Note that if you choose to contribute Guildwiki without logging in, you should still sign your posts. In this case, your IP address will take the place of your username.

Your IP address might look something like this: 192.0.2.58. Some users prefer to use their IP address instead of a user name because they think that an IP provides them with more anonymity. In fact, a pseudonymous account (that is, a registered user name) actually provides you with more protection of your identity.

Note also that signing manually with a pseudonym or tag such as --anon does not give you more anonymity or privacy protection, since your IP address will still be stored in the page history. This also makes it more difficult for other users to communicate with you.

Customizing your signature
Registered users can customize their signature by going to Special:Preferences and changing the field "Nickname". The software automatically places   and    around the text entered in this field, so that whatever nickname you choose to use as a signature will be linked to your user page. Although not a policy, it is common practice (and common courtesy) to use a signature name that is either identical or closely related to your account name, or your real name. Likewise, signatures that obscure your account name to the casual reader may be seen as disruptive.

If you want to use a more complex signature (for instance, including your own Wiki markup and HTML markup), you can choose the "Raw signatures (without automatic link)" checkbox in your Preferences. Just fill the "Your nickname" field with your desired signature, exactly as you want it to be substituted for the tildes. Be aware that even the raw signatures option treats markup very strictly, and some markup which works in normal pages will not work in signatures — see How to fix your signature if you are having problems.

{|class="prettytable" cellpadding="5" border="1" ! Wikimarkup !! Resulting code !! Resulting display
 * Lead By Example talk 
 * tags (which produce big text), or line breaks ( tags) are to be avoided, since they disrupt the way that surrounding text displays
 * Be sparing with superscript or subscript. In some cases, this type of script can also affect the way that surrounding text is displayed
 * Avoid making your signature so small that it is difficult to read
 * In consideration of users with vision problems, be sparing with colour. If you must use different colours in your signature, please ensure that the result will be readable by people with colour blindness.
 * tags (which produce big text), or line breaks ( tags) are to be avoided, since they disrupt the way that surrounding text displays
 * Be sparing with superscript or subscript. In some cases, this type of script can also affect the way that surrounding text is displayed
 * Avoid making your signature so small that it is difficult to read
 * In consideration of users with vision problems, be sparing with colour. If you must use different colours in your signature, please ensure that the result will be readable by people with colour blindness.
 * In consideration of users with vision problems, be sparing with colour. If you must use different colours in your signature, please ensure that the result will be readable by people with colour blindness.

Images
Images of any kind should not be used in signatures.

Many concerns have been raised over the use of images in signatures, and they are considered to serve no use to the encyclopedia project. Images in signatures should not be used for several reasons:


 * they are an unnecessary drain on server resources, and could cause server slowdown
 * a new image can be uploaded in place of the one you chose, making your signature a target for possible vandalism and Denial-of-service attacks
 * they reduce searchability, making pages more difficult to read
 * they make it more difficult to copy text from a page
 * they are potentially distracting from the actual message
 * in most browsers images do not scale with the text, making lines with images higher than those without
 * they clutter up the "file links" list on the image page every time you sign on a different talk page
 * images in signatures give undue prominence to a given user's contribution

Language and alphabet
Signatures with non-latin script should also include latin script.

If your preferred signature consists of characters not in the latin alphabet (hànzì, for example), you should include latin characters also. This is because characters not within the ASCII character set may not display properly for everyone. This is a particular problem for people who use screen readers. This also makes it easier to search for your user name using the search function.

Length
Keep signatures short, both in display and markup.

Long signatures with a lot of HTML/wiki markup make page editing more difficult. A 200 character signature, for instance, is likely to be larger than many of the comments to which it is appended, making discussion more difficult:


 * signatures that take up more than two or three lines in the edit window clutter the page and make it harder to distinguish posts from signatures
 * long signatures give undue prominence to a given user's contribution.

Transclusion/template
Do not use transclusion, templates or parser functions in signatures.

Transclusions, templates, and parser functions in signatures (like those which appear as  , for example) are avoidable drains on server resources. Transcluded signatures require extra processing. Whenever you change your signature source, all talk pages you have posted on must be re-cached.

Signature templates are also vandalism targets, and will be forever, even if the user leaves the project. Simple text signatures, which are stored along with the page content, use no more resources than the comments themselves and avoid these problems.

Internal links
Use internal links sparingly.

You may include a link to your talk page for people who want to discuss something with you person-to-person. Beyond that, use internal links sparingly. If you find a particular Guildwiki page useful, put it in your browser bookmarks, favorites list, or on your userpage&mdash;not in your signature.

Dealing with unsigned comments
The template Template:unsigned can be used at the end of an unsigned comment to attach the username or IP to the comment.

More about talk pages
See Talk page for accepted conventions and guidelines regarding the use of talk pages.