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 () 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:

Wikimarkup	Resulting code	Resulting display
~~~~	[[User:Example|Example]] 07:59, April 19 2024 (UTC)	Example 07:59, April 19 2024 (UTC)

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:

Wikimarkup	Resulting code	Resulting display
~~~	[[User:Example|Example]]	Example

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:

Wikimarkup	Resulting code	Resulting display
~~~~~	07:59, April 19 2024 (UTC)	07:59, April 19 2024 (UTC)

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 [[User:<yourusername>| 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 Wikipedia:How to fix your signature(broken link!) if you are having problems.

Wikimarkup	Resulting code	Resulting display
~~~	[[User:Example|<font color="Blue">'''Lead By Example'''</font>]] [[User talk:Example|''<font color="Blue">talk</font>'']]	Lead By Example talk
~~~~	[[User:Example|<font color="Blue">'''Lead By Example'''</font>]] [[User talk:Example|''<font color="Blue">talk</font>'']] 07:59, April 19 2024 (UTC)	Lead By Example talk 07:59, April 19 2024 (UTC)

To learn more about how to make complex signatures, see Wikipedia:Tip of the day/June 30, 2006.

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.

Wikimarkup	Resulting code	Resulting display
{{subst:unsigned|user name or ip|date}}	{{subst:unsigned|Example|23:59, 1 April, 2006 (UTC)}}	—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Example (contribs) 23:59, 1 April, 2006 (UTC).

More about talk pages

See Wikipedia:Talk page for accepted conventions and guidelines regarding the use of talk pages.