add site
services
publishers
database
health videos
toolbar
stats
live show
health store
more stuff
JOIN/LOGIN
| advertise add site services publishers database health videos
| | about toolbar stats live show health store more stuff JOIN/LOGIN |
United States Air Force Pharmacy SIGs :: View topic - SIG's Moved to... af-pharmacists.org |
"Wikipedia:Timestamp" redirects here. For the current local city time, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Current Local City Time. "Wikipedia:Sign" redirects here. For the signpost, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost.
Signing your posts on talk pages, both in the article and non-article namespaces, is a good practice, and facilitates discussion by helping identify the author of a particular comment. Other users can then navigate to a talk page and address their comments to the specific, relevant user(s). Discussion is an important part of collaborative editing, because it helps all users to understand the progress and evolution of a work. Signature use that is intentionally and persistently disruptive may lead to blocking under the disruptive editing policy. When editing a page, main namespace articles should not be signed, because the article is a shared work, based on the contributions of many people, and one editor should not be singled out above others.
Purpose of signaturesSignatures on Wikipedia identify you as a user and your contributions to Wikipedia. They encourage civility in discussions by identifying the author of a particular comment and the date and time at which it was made. Because of that, having an uncivil signature is strongly discouraged (in some cases, to the point of blocking the user until it is changed). In general anything that is not allowed in a user name should not be used in a signature either. When signatures should and should not be usedAny posts made to the user talk pages, article talk pages and any other discussion pages should be signed. Edits to articles should not be signed, as signatures on Wikipedia are not intended to indicate ownership or authorship of any article. Rather, the page history takes care of the need to identify edits with users. Therefore, signatures should not be used in edit summaries, as they do not translate from How to sign your postsPreferred optionUsing four tildesThere are two ways to sign your posts:
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. If you are for some reason not getting the above results when signing, see the SineBot Frequently Asked Questions for tips. Other optionsUsing three tildesTyping three tildes results in the following:
However, since this does not date-stamp your signature, you may only 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. Using five tildesTyping five tildes will convert to a date stamp with the current date and time, without adding your signature, like this:
In general, when communicating with others, you should use one of the previous options, and not only a timestamp. Note that if you choose to contribute to Wikipedia 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, as IP addresses can be easily tracked by anyone. Registered users have their IP addresses hidden from public view. Also note 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. If you choose to sign this way you should still type four tildes: --anon Customizing your signatureEvery editor's default signature (defined by MediaWiki:Signature) will display when Registered users can customize their signatures by going to Special:Preferences and changing the field "Signature". If you do not check the "Sign my name exactly as shown" box, your signature will be treated as a nickname and displayed like: If you check the "Sign my name exactly as shown" box, you may enter arbitrary wikitext for your signature. However, you should consider the guidelines below. When customizing your signature, please keep the following in mind: A distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable signature may adversely affect other users. For example, some editors find that long formatting disrupts discourse on talk pages, or makes working in the edit window more difficult. Complicated signatures contain a lot of code ("markup") that is revealed in the edit window, and can take up unnecessary amounts of narrative space, which can make both reading and editing harder. Never use another editor's signature. Impersonating another editor by using his or her username or signature is forbidden. Altering the markup code of your signature to make it look substantially like another user's signature may also be considered a form of impersonation. Editing the code of your signature to link it to another editor's userpage is not permitted. While not an absolute requirement, it is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the user name it represents. If you encounter a user whose signature is disruptive or appears to be impersonating another account, it is appropriate to ask that user to consider changing their signature to meet the requirements of this guideline. When making such a request, always be polite, and assume good faith. Do not immediately assume that the user has intentionally selected a disruptive or inappropriate signature. If you are asked to change your signature, please avoid interpreting a polite request as an attack. Since the success of Wikipedia is based on effective teamwork, both parties should work together to find a mutually acceptable solution. Signature formatting has been the subject of Requests for Comment, and has also resulted in some very heated debates. In one case a user who refused to alter an unsuitable signature was ultimately required to change it by the Arbitration Committee. This is an extreme measure for users who refuse to cooperate with reasonable requests, and should be considered a last resort. When dealing with potentially problematic signatures, simply being polite is often sufficient and can prevent the situation from escalating into a dispute. Appearance and colorYour signature should not blink, scroll, or otherwise inconvenience or annoy other editors.
ImagesMust not be usedSee also: bugzilla:6379 Images of any kind must not be used in signatures for the following reasons:
Use unicode characters insteadSee also: b:Unicode/Character reference As an alternative to using images, consider using unicode characters that are symbols, such as these: ☺☻♥♪♫♣♠♂♀§. LengthKeep signatures short, both in display and markup. Extremely long signatures with a lot of HTML/wiki markup make page editing and discussion more difficult for the following reasons:
The software will automatically truncate both plain and raw signatures to 255 characters (characters used for HTML/wiki markup are included!). LinksInternal linksSignatures must include at least one internal link to your user page, user talk page, or contributions page; this allows other editors easy access to your talk page and contributions log. The lack of such a link is widely viewed as obstructive. If, while making modifications, you accidentally disable this link, see Wikipedia:How to fix your signature. When you insert your signature on your talk page or user page a link to that page will appear black, bold and inactive, so test your signature elsewhere. Disruptive linksIt is better to put information on your user page rather than in your signature. Brief additional internal links are generally tolerated when used to facilitate communication or to provide general information, but undesirable if seen as canvassing for some purpose. Do not place any disruptive internal links, such as SIGN HERE!!!, which refers to an autograph page. External linksDo not include links to external websites in your signature. Mass posting of links to a particular website is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. Posting a link to an external website with each comment you make on a talk page could be taken as link spamming, or an attempt to improve your website's ranking on search engines (which doesn't actually work in the first place). If you want to tell other Wikipedians about a website with which you are associated, you can do so on your user page. Transclusion of templatesTransclusions of templates and parser functions in signatures (like those which appear as
Simple text signatures, which are stored along with the page content and use no more resources than the comments themselves, avoid these problems. CategoriesSignatures must not contain categories. Categorizing talk pages by who has edited them is unhelpful, and the same information can be found by using your contributions list. Many of the various edit counting utilities also provide this data. Non-Latin usernamesEditors with non-Latin usernames are welcome to edit in Wikipedia. However, non-Latin scripts, such as Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Indic scripts, Japanese, Korean, Thai and others, are illegible to most other contributors of the English Wikipedia. As a courtesy to the rest of the contributors, users with such usernames are encouraged to sign their posts (at least in part) with Latin characters. For an example refer to User:Παράδειγμα, who signs his posts as Παράδειγμα/Paradigma. A signature, consisting of or ending with characters from a right-to-left script, will appear when viewing pages as --DD ,HH:MM (NAME) Month YYYY and in the edit box as Dealing with unsigned comments"WP:UNSIGNED" redirects here. For the actual template, see Template:Unsigned. The templates {{unsigned}} and {{unsignedIP}} can be used at the end of an unsigned comment to attach the username or IP to the comment. None of these templates automatically populate (fill in) the name or IP of the poster and the time of the post. That information is best copied from the history page and pasted into the following templates. Note: All of the unsigned templates must be substituted.
The templates {{unsigned2}} and {{unsignedIP2}} do almost the same as {{unsigned}} and {{unsignedIP}} when used with two parameters, but the ordering of the parameters is reversed. The resulting display is the same. These templates may be useful when copying and pasting from the edit history, where the timestamp appears before the username.
It is also a good idea to notify users, especially new users, that they should sign their comments. You may use the template {{uw-tilde}} on the user's talk page or one of the welcome messages for new users. Also, the template {{undated}} can be used to at the end of comments where the user gave his or her username but no timestamp:
See also
Notes and references
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ↑ top of page ↑ | about thumbshots |
, to add the four tildes.