Guild Wars Wiki:Sign your comments/Draft070723

When posting comments on Guild Wars Wiki talk pages, a signature is highly encouraged. This policy defines when and how signatures should be used, not that signatures must be used. Unsigned comments have the same weight as signed comments.

The purpose of signatures
Discussion is an important part of collaborative editing as it helps other users to understand the progress and evolution of a work. Signing your posts on talk pages is not only good etiquette; it also facilitates discussion by helping other users identify the author of a particular comment, to navigate talk pages, to address specific comments to the relevant user(s), and to encourage civility by attribution and identification. Also, a standard signature includes the date and time at which a comment is made, making it easier to follow an ongoing discussion.

When signatures should be used
Any post or comment made to talk pages should be signed. Signatures on the Guild Wars Wiki do not indicate ownership or authorship of any part of an article. As such, edits to articles are not to be signed. The only exceptions to that are special pages meant for elections and adminship requests.

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

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

2. If you are using the edit toolbar option 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:

Since typing four tildes adds the time and date to your resulting signature, this is the correct way of signing your posts in discussions.

Changing the number of tildes changes the resulting signature. While these can be used for other purposes, avoid using these to sign comments.

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 produce a timestamp with the current date and time, without adding your user name:

Anonymous users
Note that if you choose to contribute to the Guild Wars Wiki without logging in, you should still sign your posts. In this case, your IP address will take the place of your username for identification purposes.

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
A registered user can customize his or her signature by going to Special:Preferences and changing the "Nickname" field. The text entered into that field will show up as that user's signature instead of the default signature (which contains just the username). Using a nickname which hides your true username or suggests that you are another user are seen as disruptive and are prohibited.

If you want to use a more complex signature (for instance, including your own Wiki markup and HTML markup), you can check the "Raw signatures (without automatic link)" checkbox in your preferences. Just fill the "Nickname" field with your desired signature, exactly as you want it to be substituted. 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.

Important considerations
A distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable signature adversely affects other users. It can be disruptive to discourse on talk pages, or when working in the edit window. When customizing your signature, please adhere to the following rules:


 * Clearly display your username in your signature.
 * A shortened version of your username is allowed. However, you must ensure that there is not actually another user already registered with your shortened username.
 * You are expected to register the shortened version as a new user account and create a redirect from that account to your main account's user page.
 * Should the shortened version belong to another person, you are not allowed to sign with it.
 * The shortened version must be an easily recognized as being a shorter version of your username.
 * Advertising and inappropriate content in signatures is not allowed.
 * You are allowed to use exactly one image or icon in your signature (see subsection on images below).

The following subsections detail additional guidelines and restrictions:

Links
Do not include links to anything else other than your user page, user talk page or user contributions page.

You must include a link to your user page and/or your user talk page; you may include a link to your user contributions page. Beyond that, internal and external links are not allowed. If you find a particular Guild Wars Wiki page useful, put it in your browser bookmarks, favorites list, or on your userpage &mdash; not in your signature. Posting a link to an external website with each comment you make on a talk page is usually viewed as link spamming. If you want to tell other users about a good website that you are associated with, do so on your user page instead.

Appearance and color
Your signature should clearly identify the user, and not be disruptive to the talk pages.

Signatures that contain a lot of markup or code are often unnecessarily long. The length of a signature reduces talk page readability while in editing mode.


 * Markup such as,  , and   tags (which produce big , sup, and sub text), are not allowed, as they disrupt the normal spacing between rows of text. Note that   is allowed.
 * Line breaks ( tags) are not allowed as they disrupt the flow of text by artificially lengthening the display space for signatures.
 * Do not make your signature so small that it is difficult to read.
 * Do not use text animations as it causes visual disruption of the text page.
 * Do not use a background color in your signature.
 * You are allowed to use different colors for links in your signature. Bright and disturbing colors are not allowed. Please also be aware that certain colors are not readable by people with color blindness.
 * Bear in mind that complex formatting results in complex markup code, which results in reduced readability of talk pages while in editing mode.

Images
Only one image is allowed and it must not be large enough to disrupt normal text spacing.

An image can be used as part of one's signature, or as it's whole. Any complex formatting desired for a custom signature would be better off as an image. Be aware of the following:


 * The user's signature may include at most one single image.
 * The image can have a maximum height of 19 pixels and a maximum of 150 pixels in width (but take note of the length restrictions in the section below).
 * If your custom signature does not include a text portion that clearly shows your username, then the image itself must clearly show your username.
 * The image file should be named Image:User sig. , for example Image:User Example sig.png for the signature image of User:Example. Do not directly use an image or icon meant for other parts of the Guild Wars Wiki.
 * The image file must redirect to the user's user page or talk page and be tagged with user image.
 * No animated images are permitted due to the visual disruption they cause within text pages.
 * Using bright and disturbing colors in your signature icon is not allowed. Please also be aware that certain colors are not readable by people with color blindness.

Length
Keep signatures short, both in display and markup.

Long signatures with a lot of HTML/wiki markup make page editing more difficult when attempting to follow a discussion in editing mode. A 300-character signature, for instance, is likely larger than many of the comments to which it is appended.


 * The total text of a signature should generally be kept to about 150 characters, with leniency given to users with long usernames. This excludes the length of the date and time.
 * Consider using an image instead for long signatures with complex formatting.
 * The full resulting signature (as it appears on talk pages) should be no wider than about 150 pixels, excluding the time and date. Use the width of two to three keyboard buttons as a general measure.

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

User signatures are not to be stored on a separate page. Your custom signature must be in the "Nickname" text box in your preferences.

Transclusions and parser functions in signatures 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 forever will be, even if the user stops contributing. Simple text signatures, which are stored along with the page content use no more resources than the comments themselves and avoid these problems.

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.