Help:How to sign your posts on talk pages

Signing your posts (on all talk or discussion pages) is an essential aspect of the community communication that helps articles to be formed and developed. Discussion helps other users who are reading talk pages to understand the progress and evolution of a dialogue, and to better offer their help, and to easier judge users who are accountable to their comments.

Because of this necessity, a very easy way to create signatures is available. To automatically sign your posts with a date-stamp, add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your message; or add three tildes (~~~) to add just your name. (In general, using the full date-stamp is preferred.)

Basics

Here's a list of all the signature options:

What you type	What will be stored	What shows on the page
~~~	[[User:Tdoyle|Tdoyle]]	Tdoyle
~~~~	[[User:Tdoyle|Tdoyle]] 04:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)	Tdoyle 04:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
~~~~~	04:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)	04:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Customizing your signature

Users can customize their signature by going to Special:Preferences and changing the field "Nickname". The software automatically places "[[User:<yourusername>|" and "]]" around the text entered in this field, so that whatever nickname you choose to use as a signature will be linked to your user page. Please use a signature name that is either identical or closely related to your account name, or to use your real name.

If you want to use a more complex signature (for instance, including a link to your talk page), you can choose the "Raw signatures (without automatic link)" checkbox in your Preferences. Just fill the "Your nickname" field with your desired signature, exactly as you want it to be substituted for the tildes.