MediaWiki talk:Yournick

It might be a good idea to put a link to Help:Wikisig here, e.g.:

Signature^{What is this?}:

-- Nx / talk 09:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Are these the files that make up the preferences pages? It would be very useful to link back to the wiki-fu guide as some people do just jump straight to "prefs" to see what they can do. ^pathetic 09:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this one is only used on the prefs page, I checked that. MW 1.16 has an extra line of text below the option (you can see this on Wikipedia) that reads:

Comments on talk pages should be signed with "~~~~" which will be converted into your signature and a timestamp.

That would be a better place to put the link to the help page, once we get MW 1.16. -- Nx / talk 17:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems you have to "create" this page rather than edit it. Is that because it's a MW message so doesn't work quite that way, or some other quirk? But the ^{What is this?} message is a good idea. It's a common enough thing and a more general help file for the whole preferences menu would be pretty complicated. ^pathetic 18:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the default MW messages are stored in a php file, and these pages don't exist in the database until you create them. But they appear as bluelinks if the message is defined (and redlinks if it is not), and the default from the php file is displayed as if the page existed. -- Nx / talk 18:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

(u/d) Seems sensible. –SuspectedReplicant^{retire me} 12:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I feel as if I learn something new and important every day here. ^pathetic 14:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)