User blog:Master Ceadeus 27/Cracking Down On Message Signing

Hunters!

As you may guess from the title, this blog is going to discuss user signatures, in particular their use in attributing messages.

When a user messages another user, the user being messaged needs to be able to quickly learn who sent the message, and they should be able to respond on their or that user's talk page without asking "Who is this?" or reviewing their complicated Talk Page history. The solution to this rather troubling situation is signatures.

Signatures are small bits of text, placed on a page with, that inputs a link to your userpage and talk by default. If you customize it, you can change it so it looks prettier and so it links to more things, like contributions or your blog.

They are also very useful, because with them, you can tell a user who you are when you message them. Since talk page messages do not, by default, tell a user who left a message on the page itself, it is helpful--very helpful--to include a signature and timestamp.

To place a signature and timestamp, follow these steps:


 * 1) Write your message.
 * 2) Make sure there is some separation between the end of your message and the beginning of your signature.
 * 3) Write 4 tildes
 * 4) Publish!

I'm going to start cracking down on not using signatures, as well as signatures that don't link. It's unneeded work that a user has to go through just to see who edited their talk page.