Help:Signature

It is good Wikiquette to sign your comments on talk pages, but articles, help pages, policies, and other content pages usually should not be signed.

How to sign
To sign your name, type ~. For instance, if your nickname is CoolCleanHacker, then your ~ is internally translated to something like "CoolCleanHacker 12:34, 5 Jan 2006 (UTC)".

You can use three tildes if you don't want a timestamp, or five  if you only want a timestamp.

Change your signature
Your default signature will contain a link to your user page:
 * CoolCleanHacker

Y0ou can change this to point to somewhere else, e. g. to your talk page. In this case, you want your signature to be:
 * CoolCleanHacker (talk)

To get this, go to your Preferences and check the Raw signatures (without automatic link) box. Then enter
 * User:CoolCleanHacker (talk)

in the Your nickname (for signatures): field.

Please note that:
 * using another nickname than your username is confusing (the page history shows your username, not your nickname)
 * if you show your username as an image, or with letters replaced by special characters, even if the name is still readable, searching a talk page for your username will fail
 * excessive signatures may clutter talk pages
 * drawing excessive attention to yourself may create the impression that you find yourself more important than other people

Using images and templates in signatures
Note that changes in the images and templates are retroactive, which on one hand may be confusing, but on the other hand, to rectify annoying signatures, may be convenient. To avoid retroactivity, use a new image or template name. Do not create a signature template in the article or template namespace instead use a subpage of your own userpage such as sig, and link it with " ".

Signatures by anonymous users
If you chose to edit Clean City 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.