Editing Encyclopedia:Signatures (section)

==== Guidelines and policies ====
{{shortcut|WP:CUSTOMSIG/P}}
Because these signatures are seen by everyone, be aware of the guidelines and policies summarized below:
* A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username, but this is not required.<ref group="Note">A [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Signatures&oldid=1029971563#RfC:_usernames_in_signatures 2021 RfC] was closed with consensus against signatures being required to correspond exactly to usernames and no consensus to require that signatures be easily recognizable to a new user as referring to the username they link to.</ref>
* Do not impersonate other users.
* Do not use [[Wikipedia:Image use policy|images]], [[Help:Transclusion|transcluded]] [[Wikipedia:Template namespace|templates]], [[Wikipedia:Lua|Lua modules]], [[Wikipedia:Parser Functions|parser functions]], [[Wikipedia:TemplateStyles|TemplateStyles]] or [[Wikipedia:External links|external links]] in your signature.
* A distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable signature may adversely affect other users. For example, some editors find that long formatting disrupts discourse on talk pages, or makes working in the edit window more difficult.
* Complicated signatures contain a lot of code ("[[WP:MARKUP|markup]]") that is revealed in the edit window, and can take up unnecessary amounts of narrative space, which can make both reading and editing harder.
* Always keep the time/date-stamp: these are used by bots to determine when a discussion is eligible to be archived.