Smashpedia:Sign your comments

When signing posts on SmashWiki talk pages, use a reasonable signature. This policy defines guidelines for determining the reasonableness of a used signature. The policy should be interpreted as defining when and how signatures should be used.

Signing your posts on talk pages and other Smashwiki 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 SmashWiki
Signatures on SmashWiki
 * Identify you as a user, and your contributions to SmashWiki.
 * Enable other editors to recognise the user name (or IP address) 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 should be signed.
 * User talk pages
 * Article talk pages
 * Other discussion pages

On the other hand, signatures on SmashWiki are not intended to indicate ownership or authorship of any SmashWiki 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:  ~.

(Note: Don't bother adding your name, date or anything else after the four tildes. As awkward as it may seem, the four tildes will automatically generate your signature.)

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:

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 SmashWiki 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 "Custom signature". A substituted signature should resemble to some degree the username it represents. Signatures that obscure an 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 (or a subpage from your user space), 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.

{|class="prettytable" cellpadding="5" border="1" ! Wikimarkup !! Resulting code !! Resulting display
 * Lead By Example talk 
 * ,, and   tags (which produce big , sup, and sub text), are not allowed, as they disrupt the normal spacing between rows of text.
 * 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  or other text animations as it causes visual disruption of the text page.
 * ,, and   tags (which produce big , sup, and sub text), are not allowed, as they disrupt the normal spacing between rows of text.
 * 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  or other text animations as it causes visual disruption of the text page.
 * Do not use  or other text animations as it causes visual disruption of the text page.

Images
Images should be used sparingly and not be large enough to disrupt normal text spacing.

Images should meet the following guidelines:
 * The user's signature may include one small icon. The icon's image file should not be larger than 50 pixels wide x 19 pixels tall.
 * The image file must redirect to the users user page or talk page.
 * The icon's image file should be exclusive for the signature, not shared with anything in SmashWiki. This allows for a redirect on the image file to the user page or the user talk page.  Note: The image can be a duplicate of another image, if it's resized appropriately.
 * No animated images are permitted due to the visual disruption they cause within text pages.

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 three lines (at 800x600 resolution) 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 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 will be forever, 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.


 * If a separate page is used to store the signature, the page should not be used as a signature by including it, but by substituting.

Internal links
Use internal links sparingly.

You may include a link to your user page, your contributions, and your talkpage for people who want to discuss something with you person-to-person. Beyond that, internal links should be avoided. If you find a particular SmashWiki page useful, put it in your browser bookmarks, favorites list, or on your userpage &mdash; not in your signature.


 * Do not include links to characters, items, personal fun pages, etc. in your signature.
 * You may also include in your signature 1 link to either your user page or your talkpage on central wikia, as long as you keep a link to your userpage or your talkpage on this wiki as well.