This page documents an English Wikipedia behavioral guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. Shortcuts:
WP:SIG
WP:SIGNATURE
WP:SIGN
This page in a nutshell: Please sign your posts on talk pages, using ~~~~. Keep the coding of your signature short, do not make the signature too large and ensure that the end result is readable by people with color blindness.
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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 signatures

Signatures 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 used

Any 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 ~~~~. In other instances, when posts should not be signed, specific instructions are provided to contributors.

How to sign your posts

Preferred option

Using four tildes

There are two ways to sign your posts:

1. At the end of your comments simply type four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~.
2. If you are using the edit toolbar option (it usually appears above the edit screen as a default),[1] 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:

Wikimarkup Resulting code Resulting display
~~~~ [[User:Example|Example]] ([[User talk:Example|talk]]) 17:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC) Example (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

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 options

Using three tildes

Typing three tildes results in the following:

Wikimarkup Resulting code Resulting display
~~~ [[User:Example|Example]] ([[User talk:Example|talk]]) Example (talk)

However, since this does not date-stamp your signature, you may wish to sign this way only 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 tildes

Typing five tildes will convert to a date stamp with the current date and time, without adding your signature, like this:

Wikimarkup Resulting code Resulting display
~~~~~ 17:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC) 17:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

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 signature

Shortcut:
WP:CUSTOMSIG

Every editor's default signature (defined by MediaWiki:Signature) will display when ~~~~ is typed. This looks like:

Example (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

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:

NICKNAME (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

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.

Policy shortcuts:
WP:SIGEDITORIMPERSONATE
WP:Signature forgery

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 color

Your signature should not blink, scroll, or otherwise inconvenience or annoy other editors.

• Avoid markup such as <big> tags and <font size="3"> markup (which produce big text), or line breaks (<br /> tags), since they disrupt the way that surrounding text displays. The limited use of non-breaking spaces to ensure that the signature displays on one line is allowed.
• Be sparing with superscript or subscript. In some cases, this type of script can also affect the way that surrounding text is displayed.
• Do not make your signature so small that it is difficult to read.
• As some users have vision problems, be sparing with color. If you must use different colors in your signature, please ensure that the result will be readable by people with color blindness, defective color vision, and other visual disabilities.[2]
• Do not include horizontal rules (----).

To display your signature in a different color for yourself only, add the following to your monobook.css, replacing YOUR_NAME with your username:

a.mw-userlink[] { background-color: #ff7700; color: #ffffff; }

Images

Must not be used

Images of any kind must not be used in signatures for the following reasons:

• they are an unnecessary drain on server resources, and could cause server slowdown
• a new image can be uploaded in place of the one you chose, making your signature a target for possible vandalism and Denial-of-service attacks
• they make pages more difficult to read and scan
• they make it more difficult to copy text from a page
• they are potentially distracting from the actual message
• images do not scale with the text, making lines with images higher than those without
• they clutter up the "file links" list on the image page every time you sign on a different talk page
• images in signatures give undue prominence to a given user's contribution

Use unicode characters instead

As an alternative to using images, consider using unicode characters that are symbols, such as these: ☺☻♥♪♫♣♠♂♀§.

Length

Keep 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:

• signatures that take up more than two or three lines 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;
• signatures which have long HTML/wiki markup and contain no spaces cause other editors' edit boxes to show unnecessary horizontal scrollbars (such signatures may have spaces added to them by any editor);
• signatures that occupy more space than necessary in the edit box displace meaningful comments, thus forcing the editor to scroll when writing their reply, and
• the presence of such long signatures in the discussion also disrupts the reading of comments when an editor is formulating her or his reply.

The software will automatically truncate both plain and raw signatures to 255 characters (characters used for HTML/wiki markup are included!).

Links

Internal links

Signatures 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.