The Elder Scrolls Wiki:Signature policy

This page is considered an official policy on TESWiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy.

A signature is a piece of text or wikicode which identifies you as the author of a block of text on 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 you messages easily. Including the date and time allows other and new users see how current the discuss you participated in are. If you're stuck on how talk pages work, see: Help:Talk Pages.

Signatures are used on talkpages 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 Alduin'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 talk pages on this wiki for explicit examples of how and when using a signature is appropriate.

How do I add a signature?

Signing 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:

--Example 01:17, 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 voila! Your signature is neatly posted after your text. The button appears as:

and

There are ocassions when you will need to sign something only with the date. You can do so by inserting five tilde wherever necessary. When you type it, it will looks like this:

~~~~~

On the talk page, it looks like this:

01:22, 3 November 2011 (CDT)

How do I change my signature?

Main article: Template: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. We follow the same rules. You can create a signature automatically using .

First, you will need to create a template for your new signature. To do so, use Template:Signature. Now, you will want to start with linking to your userpage. Type:

[[User:Example|Example]]

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

[[User:Example|Example]] [[User talk:Example|^{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 (enclosed in noinclude tags): <noinclude>[[Category:User Signature Templates]]</noinclude> . 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:Signature|USERNAME}}

Don't forget to hit save! Also, make sure the box "I want to use wikitext in my signature" is checked. 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. Additionally, you can simply type the template at the end of your text. Here's an example:

I agree with the original poster. This page should include a section on the battle. {{Signature/USERNAME}}.

Which renders:

I agree with the original poster. This page should include a section on the battle. --Example ^{talk page} contribs 01:26, 3 November 2011 (CDT).

What about anonymous users and signatures?

If you chose to edit The Elder Scrolls 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.) Nonetheless, signing talk pages is necessary for anonymous users.

What if a page is not signed?

Signing talk pages is MANDATORY. No if's, and's, or but's. All users will see a warning notification if they attempt to post on a talkpage without signing their post. 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}}

or

{{unsigned IP|127.0.0.0}}

Which looks like this:

—This unsigned comment is by USERNAME (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

or

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 127.0.0.0 (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 making our wiki awesome!