RationalWiki:Help/wikisig

From RationalWiki

This explains how to sign your name and leave a timestamp when editing talk pages - and how to make really fancy versions of your signature.

1 Basic
2 One step fancier
3 Getting carried away

[edit] Basic

Whenever you edit a talk page, you should enter four tildes (~~~~) in line after your comment. This will create a signature that is your user name, linked to your user page, and time and date stamp your comment.

[edit] One step fancier

If you want to leave more than just your user name and link to your user page (many people like to at least create a link to their talk page for people to use), you do this:

Go to the my preferences link in the top right of any screen.

Check the box that says Raw signatures (without automatic link)

In the box labelled Nickname type in your preferred signature format.

Let's say your user name is RWuser, but you want the signature to read "RatWikian", and you want a link to your talk page that says "Talk to me". If you can fill in the blanks, use this:

[[User:RWuser|RatWikian]][[User_Talk:RWian|Talk to me]]

The tags that say and are often used to raise (and shrink) that part of the text. No one knows why, but lots of people do it.

Click save at the lower left and you are done. It's a good idea to test your new signature on your own talk page or user page to make sure that it works and looks like what you want. Note: on those pages, the link to that page itself will be "dead", due to the way the software works. For a full test, try it on someone else's talk page.

Your username is case sensitive, and it's a good idea to replace spaces in user name with 'underscore' ( _ )

[edit] Getting carried away

Many users, once they are settled in, like to develop signatures that are, well, let's say a bit "creative".

People use strange characters, some or lots of colors, and even randomized phrases or words for part or all of their signature.

Since this takes up a lot of space on talk pages, it is good form to use templates to build such signatures.

First, you need to understand the concept of templates and transclusion. In the MediaWiki software, if a filename is enclosed in braces like this: {{filename}} on another page, first, it looks for a file called "template:filename". If it doesn't find one, it looks for "filename" in the mainspace, or a few other closely related spaces.

If it finds it, everything from "filename" is included directly into the page where {{filename}} is placed. (There are exceptions, but they don't matter in signatures)

[edit] The first step

The first thing to do is to create a subpage of your user page. For illustration, from now on I will use human's stuff, since he can't stop me.

A subpage of user human's page looks like this: User:Human/sig. If you create one of your own (just type User:Yourname/sig into the search box & click "Go"), it will appear as a red link or ask you if you want to create it. (The answer is "yes").

In that subpage, put all the junk that makes up your current signature.

Then enter this into your preferences under "nickname": {{SUBST:User:Human/sig}} -- but don't use Human's as that will confuse everyone. One of him is enough.

When you sign pages, the result will be the same as when you had a bunch of wikicode in the nickname box.

Now you are ready for Stage 2 - nitrous and a chip.

[edit] Going over the edge

If you have anything you want to do that will take up a lot of space, you should put it in yet another sub page and include that subpage in your /sig page.

Since Human thought it would somehow be cool to have the link to his talk page be chosen at random from a bunch of phrases he (and only he) thought were cool, he created User:Human/sigtalk.

So his /sig page does the silly purple color for his user page link, but then transcludes the /sigtalk page to get the random talk link thing. What appears when he signs talk pages is this:

'''[[user:human|human]]'''{{User:Human/sigtalk}}

Not too bad, it only takes up about a line of text, and yet that {{User:Human/sigtalk}} is about 15-20 lines of gibberish.

Going one step further, for the ultimate in signature cleanliness and versatility, if he put all of his signature code in the "second" subpage, and then made his "first" subpage simply a translusion of it, all that will appear on talk page sources is {{User:Human/sigtalk}}. What a relief that would be. Any changes he then makes to /sigtalk will appear wherever he ever signed his name anywhere!

Rumor has it that the reason he didn't go all the way with this is that, once upon a time, his talk page was the most linked to page on RationalWiki. Too bad, joker, goat passed you a month or so ago and is gaining fast.

[edit] How the random thing works

It's easiest to go look at that fool Human's sigtalk page linked above, but once Bohdan succeeds in taking over RationalWiki, it might not be there anymore. So you do this:

<choose> <nowiki><option weight=10>stuff</option> <option weight=1>and</option></nowiki> <option weight=1>nonsense'</option> </choose>

This will return "stuff" ten times as often as either "and" or "nonsense".

Any formatting, colors, or linking needs to be done inside the option tags - it doesn't work if you try to do it outside them. So that gets a bit repetitive, but you can simply copy and paste once you get what you like.

[edit] Pretty colors

Some people also have "issues" with color. They may have a favorite one or two, or one they want to use to make other people miserable. Or twelve. You may be one of those people who wants to code your signature in eyewatering colours.

Colors are manipulated with the "font" tag, like these examples:

RED TEXT
RED TEXT

If you can speak hexadecimal: Internet colors are described by a six digit "hexadecimal", or base-16 (0,1,2,3 ... 9,a,b,c,d,e,f) number. This yields that 16 million color figure you've always heard about (16⁶). The first two are for how much red is in the color, the third and fourth denote how much green, and the fifth and sixth denote how much blue there is (memnonic: RGB). Also, the color is additive - that is to say that 'ffffff' (full red, full green, full blue) is white, while '000000' is black. Any color where each of the three pairs of numbers is equal will be a shade of grey.

If you can't: About sixteen color names are supported (red, blue, green, black, yellow, etc.) and you might find one or more that makes you happy.

Please keep in mind that a certain degree of readability goes a long way to making friends.

So, this: This text is nigh-unreadable and really hard on the eyes.

produces this: This text is nigh-unreadable and really hard on the eyes.

And might not be a desireable color choice.

If you decide to build a signature with lots of "font color" tags, please put in a double template as described above, so it doesn't use an entire screen on talk page sources for people to scroll past.

Here is an example of how to add colors to your signature:

[[User:Anon|'''anon''']][[User_talk:Anon|''who?'']]

Yields: anon^who?

This is a breakdown of each section in the above example:

Actual username	Desired color (rrggbb)	Display nickname	Actual talk page	Desired color (rrggbb)	up	Talk link text	Close tags	Result
[[User:Anon\|	<font color="#0022ff">	anon</font>]]	[[User_talk:Anon\|	<font color="#ff5500">	<sup>	who?	</sup></font>]]	anon^who?

Here are the sixteen colors you can use by "name" rather than by "number":

Color	Hexadecimal		Color	Hexadecimal		Color	Hexadecimal		Color	Hexadecimal
	Background	Text		Background	Text		Background	Text		Background	Text
aqua	#00FFFF	Sample text	black	#000000	Sample text	blue	#0000FF	Sample text	fuchsia	#FF00FF	Sample text
gray	#808080	Sample text	green	#008000	Sample text	lime	#00FF00	Sample text	maroon	#800000	Sample text
navy	#000080	Sample text	olive	#808000	Sample text	purple	#800080	Sample text	red	#FF0000	Sample text
silver	#C0C0C0	Sample text	teal	#008080	Sample text	white	#FFFFFF	Sample text	yellow	#FFFF00	Sample text

And here is how to use them: [[User:Anon|'''anon''']][[User_talk:Anon|''who?'']]

Yields: anon^who?

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