Editing Encyclopedia:Signatures (section)

== <span id="LINK"></span>Links ==
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=== Internal links ===

Signatures must include at least one direct internal link to your [[Wikipedia:User pages|user page]], user talk page, or contributions page; this allows other editors easy access to your talk page and contributions log. The lack of such a link is widely viewed as obstructive.

If, while making modifications, you accidentally disable this link, see [[Help:How to fix your signature]]. When you insert your signature on your talk page or user page, a link to that page will appear black, bold and inactive, so test your signature elsewhere, such as the [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|sandbox]].

=== <span id="DL"></span>Disruptive links ===
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It is better to put information on your user page rather than in your signature. Brief additional internal links are generally tolerated when used to facilitate communication or to provide general information, but undesirable if seen as [[Wikipedia:canvassing|canvassing]] for some purpose.

Do not place any disruptive internal links (especially when combined with custom formatting, for example <span style="color:#002BB8; cursor:pointer; vertical-align:super;" title="This is just an example, and does not link to anything">CLICK HERE!!!</span>) in your signature.

=== <span id="EL"></span>External links ===
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{{strong|Do not include links to external websites in your signature.}}

Mass posting of links to a particular website is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. Posting a link to an external website with each comment you make on a talk page could be taken as link spamming, or an attempt to improve your website's ranking on search engines (which doesn't actually work in the first place). If you want to tell other Wikipedians about a website with which you are associated, you can do so on your user page.

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===Transclusion of templates (or other pages)===
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* [[Wikipedia:Transclusion|Transclusions]] of [[Wikipedia:Template namespace|templates]], [[WP:LUA|Lua modules]], [[mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions|parser functions]], and [[Wikipedia:TemplateStyles|TemplateStyles]] in signatures (like those which appear as <code><nowiki>{{User:Name/sig}}</nowiki></code>, <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:...}}</nowiki></code>, <code><nowiki>{{#if:...}}</nowiki></code> or <code><nowiki><templatestyles ... /></nowiki></code>) are forbidden for the following reasons:
** Certain automated scripts (bots) are used to automatically archive particularly active talk pages. These bots read the source of the talk page, but don't transclude templates, and so don't recognize the template as a signature.
** Signature templates are vandalism targets, and will be forever, even if the user leaves the project.
** Signature templates are a small but unnecessary drain on the servers. Transcluded signatures require extra processing—whenever you change your signature source, all talk pages you have posted on must be [[Web cache|re-cached]].
** [[WP:PING|User mention notifications]] will not work if the mentioning user's signature is contained in a template.
** If you try to use a transcluded signature, it will automatically be converted to <nowiki>{{SUBST:User:Name/sig}}</nowiki>.
* [[WP:SUBST|Substitutions]] of templates in signatures is permissible but <u>discouraged</u>, as the template that is substituted may be vandalized without the user knowing.
** Users who choose to substitute their signature are {{strong|required}} to be {{strong|highly vigilant}} of their signature whenever they sign.
** Substitution must not be used to circumvent the normal restrictions on signature content, including the use of [[#Images|images]], [[#Appearance and color|obnoxious markup]], or [[#LENGTH|excessive length]].

Simple text signatures, which are stored along with the page content and use no more resources than the comments themselves, avoid these problems.
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=== Categories ===
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Signatures must not contain [[Help:Category|categories]]. Categorizing talk pages by who has edited them is unhelpful, and the same information can be found by using [[Help:User contributions|your contributions list]]. Many of the various [[Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters|edit counting utilities]] also provide this data.
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