Help:Signature

A signature is a piece of text or wikicode which identifies you as the author of a block of text of a wiki. Signatures include the date, time, and your username. Signatures contain links to your userpage, talk page, and contributions. This helps other users find your information, your edits, and a place where they can leave your messages easily. Including the date and time allows other and new users see how current the discuss you participated in are.

Signatures are used on talkpages and forums to easily track discussions, those participating in them, and who has which opinion about what. In the world of wikis, we call this having good "Wikiquette". As such, it is a direct violation of Wikiquette to include signatures on mainspace articles. For instance, if you noticed that an editor said Crono's hair was green, when in fact, you know and have proof, that his hair is red, you could not edit the page and include your signature after the edit. Likewise, help pages and policy pages should be signature-free.

Still confused? See below or check out the various forums and talk pages on this wiki for explicit examples of how and when using a signature is appropriate.

Alternatively, you have the option to sign talk pages and forums with a word bubble (unless specified otherwise at the top of that talk page). More on this here: Help:Word Bubble

How do I add a signature?

Singing a post on a talk page is easy and typing four simple key strokes. In the upper right-hand corner of every standard keyboard is the tilde. The tilde resembles a squiggle. To sign a post, simply include this key stroke four times. This displays your username (or IP address for anonymous users), the time, date, and time zone associated with your post. Easy right? When editing, your signature appears like this:

~~~~

When your edit is published, it will resemble this:

--User:Example01:17, 3 November 2011 (CDT)

Alternatively, you can click the handy-dandy 'signature button in the edit tool bar at the top of your editing window (unless you have turned off "show edit toolbar" in your preferences). Move your cursor to the very end of your text post, click the button, and the four tilde mark will appear. Press publish, and viola! Your signature is neatly posted after your text. The button appears as such:

How do I change my signature?

Your default signature will contain just your username and time, in blue. Boring, right? Here are some tricks for personalizing your signature. Note: Wikipedia lists various things to avoid putting in your signature, including templates, images, and blinking text. There is no overall policy at Chrono Wiki about this.

First, you will need to create a template for your new signature. To do so, use the search bar and type in Template:Username/sig. Click on the red link, denoting that the page was not found. Now, you will want to start with linking to your userpage. Type:

[[User:Example]]

Now, you can change the color, by doing this. For a list of colors, check this: Chrono Wiki:Markup/HTML/Color Chart.

[[User:Example| <span style="color:#4B0082">Example </span>]]

Gives you a purple username. Like this: Example talk page

You can add a link to your talk page, simply by adding this:

[[User:Example| <span style="color:#4B0082">Example </span>]] [[User talk:Example|talk page]]

And it looks like this: Example talk page

You can suspend the talk page link by using the , which looks like this: Example ^{talk page}. You can even change the color. Looks, now it' blue: Example ^{talk page} . Easy, eh?

Lastly, you can add a link to your contribution or even your sandbox, by following the same procedure:

[[User:Example| <span style="color:#4B0082">Example </span>]] [[User talk:Example|<span style="color:#00FFFF">^{talk page}]] [[Special:Contributions/Example|contribs]].

And that will give you this:

Example ^{talk page} contribs.

Feel free to experiment, mix, and match as you see fit. Generally, we ask that images not be placed in signatures, as they can be distracting and consume space on the wiki. Once you've created your new signature, make sure to save it, and add this category: [[Category:User Signatures]] . And you're done. You can change your signature at any time by editing it. To insert it into pages, simply go to your preferences, find the Signature section and type the name of your template there. Like so:

{{SUBST:Username/sig}}

Don't forget to hit save! Now, any time you click the signature button or type four tildes, this new signature appears. Neat, huh? Your custom signature should automatically include the date and time for you.

What about anonymous users and signatures?

If you chose to edit Chrono Wiki without logging in, the tildes will be converted to your IP address. In such cases, it may make more sense to manually sign your posts with a pseudonym or tag such as --anon. (Note that choosing not to sign with tildes does not keep your IP address private, since the IP still appears in the page history.)

What if a page is not signed?

Signing talk pages and forums is 'MANDATORY. No if's, and's, or but's. If you see that someone hasn't signed their post, you can easily remedy that by typing this simple template after their post:

{{unsigned|USERNAME}}

Which looks like this:

—Preceding unsigned comment added by USERNAME (talk • contribs)

Replace the USERNAME with that of the person who forgot to sign. Also, be sure to throw them a friendly reminder on their talk page. For unsigned posts of those who haven't created an account, simply copy and paste their IP address in the place where the username would go.

Now, stop reading and return to make our wiki awesome!