Wiki Signature

While browsing wiki, you will notice that some paragraphs have a person's name attached to the end. This is a WikiSignature: it identifies the author of that contribution. To sign a paragraph, affix two hyphen characters and your UserName, as is done at the end of this paragraph. -- KrisJohnson

Wiki is a collaborative medium that distills the knowledge and experience of a lot of people. For this reason, use of personal signatures is a controversial issue. Some think that nothing should ever be signed, because anonymity promotes free flow and editing of information. Others think that all contributions should be signed, to give proper credit to the authors, to promote clear dialogue, and to promote community spirit and mutual respect. Most authors adhere to a moderate position, signing some contributions and not signing others.

This page does not resolve this difficult issue one way or another, but it does attempt to provide a concise, balanced overview of the moderate position. This is intended to provide new wiki users with enough information to make their own decisions about whether to sign their own contributions.

Do Not Sign Your Name If

You want to remain anonymous.
You don't care about getting credit.
You are editing someone else's contribution without changing its meaning.
You are presenting facts, widely held beliefs, or other information that is completely impersonal.
You want your contribution to be merged into the whole.
You want your contribution to be deleted if others deem it irrelevant or unhelpful.

Do Sign Your Name If

You are relating personal experience or personal opinion, or are otherwise talking about yourself. (If "I", "me", or "my" appear in your contribution, that's a good indication that it merits a signature.)
You want to take credit, either because you are proud of it or because you want others to correspond with you about it.
You want to establish "ownership" or "protection" of the contribution (but see below).
You are engaging in a dialogue or ThreadMode discussion with multiple authors. In this case, signatures help readers sort out the various positions.
You are directly criticizing another author or stating a controversial opinion. Anonymous contributions are often taken less seriously than contributions for which someone is willing to take credit. A strongly negative anonymous contribution that does not have obvious value is likely to be categorized as "ranting" or "vandalism" and will be ignored or deleted.
You are trying to provide friendly, helpful advice. A personal touch helps in these cases.
You want to find your contributions later. (Use FullSearch with your name, or use the backlink at the top of your WikiHomePage.)

Signed contributions usually enjoy some "protection" from editing by other authors. However, it is common for signatures to be removed during the editing and refactoring process as people try to distill DocumentMode pages from ThreadMode pages, and signed contributions may be deleted if they are deemed to be redundant or irrelevant. If you want your work to be protected, either put it in your WikiHomePage, or find a forum that offers more control than this wiki does.

In addition to or as an alternative to signatures, you can set a UserName that will show up on the RecentChanges or RecentEdits page after you make an edit. This attribution will last only until the next person makes an edit to a page you have edited.

As noted above, reasonable people disagree about use of signatures. If you want to read more opinions or contribute your own, see the following pages:

UsingSignatures / ToSignOrNotToSign / RefactorWhileRespectingSignatures / PleaseDontDeleteMyName / TypesOfSignature / NoNamesPlease / WikiUserNamesHaveFallenOutOfStyle / WikiCopyRights / BecomingAnonymous / RightToSign

Please do not add more ThreadMode discussion to this particular page. But do improve it if you can. The goal is to provide a concise overview of the signature issue for new users.

CategoryWiki