Difference between revisions of "Help:Signatures"

Revision as of 21:37, 12 January 2010

Users can easily sign their posts at the end of a comment. Signing is normally done on talk pages only, not on conjointly written articles.

Default signature options

There are three default options. Four tildes are standard (full signature). Typing three tildes results in a username-only signature (without timestamp). Typing five tildes results in a pure timestamp (without username).

~~~~

~~~

~~~~~

If you edit without logging in, your IP address will take the place of a username. Usernames and IP addresses are also stored in page histories as a record of who wrote what, so others can always verify signatures.

The common format to type a signature – two hyphens (or a dash) followed by four tildes (-- ~~~~) – is derived from the computer network Usenet, where two hyphens mark a signature block. The actual signature string, the tildes, automatically get substituted with username (linked to the appropriate user page) and timestamp (time/date), when you save a signed edit. This helps other users to follow the chronological order of discussions, and to identify the author of a particular comment.

If you don't find the tilde on your keyboard, you can use the signature button signature button of the default edit toolbar as a typing aid.

Signatures do not work in edit summaries (they do not translate from ~~~~ there).

Customized signatures

Registered users can customize their signature (the part between the two hyphens and the timestamp) by changing the field "New signature:" in their preferences. By default, anything you enter there will be wrapped with [[ ]]. To use a special linking (without this automatic link), you have to enable “Raw signatures.” Then you can add Wiki markup and also HTML (as far as allowed on the wiki) as you like, but the maximum length is 255 characters. Please note that striking signatures are often disliked by other users.

If you enable “Raw signatures” but don't add any customized signature string, you'll sign with your unlinked username.

The most common customizations are the following two:

Template

Syntax

{{Languages|PageName}}

• PageName (optional) - the name of the page to display language links for. If omitted then the English version of the current page is used. This parameter can normally be omitted, as it is only required if you want to link to a page other than the one you place the template on, which is very uncommon. If this parameter is used on a sub-page make sure you supply the root name, not the full page name (e.g. on MediaWiki/fr you would need to use {{Languages|MediaWiki}} and not {{Languages|MediaWiki/fr}}).

Usage

The template should only be placed on pages that exist in more than one language, and it should be placed in the same location on each translation of the page.

The English version of a page is always the main version, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

For example, on the Main Page you would include the text {{Languages}}, both on Main Page itself, and on each of its language sub-pages. The template automatically creates links to any language sub-pages that exist, e.g. Main Page/ja<tt>, <tt>Main Page/fr, and ignores non-existant languages.

See Project:Language policy for further details about translating pages.

Supported languages

This shows you the name of each language's sub-page (using Main Page as an example). Other languages may be added easily as necessary. Please use the appropriate prefix, as used on Wikipedia when adding a new language. Please do not add languages for which no pages exist yet, as this will increase the time needed to include the template without adding any benefit (languages are only displayed to the user when the relevant page exists).

The link on the language names goes to the Wikipedia in that language. If no Wikipedia in your language exists, do not add pages in that language to MediaWiki.org! This wiki is not the place for language advocacy - please go through the correct channels, and once your language has a Wikipedia then please return to add content here.

Example

Here is how the language bar looks on the MediaWiki page: Template loop detected: Template:Languages