New requirements for user signatures/Help

This page is for people who have a custom signature set in their account preferences.

A change to Wikipedia's software has made your current custom signature incompatible with the software.

There are multiple possible errors. If you received a message about an error in your account, then that message should tell you what type of error you had.

Simple solution that works for everyone
No matter what error your account has, resetting your signature to the default will solve the problem.


 * Reset your signature to the default:
 * Find the signature section in the first tab of Special:Preferences. (Remember that you need to find this section of your preferences at the wiki(s) where you have the signature problem.  This link will take you to your preferences on MediaWiki.org.  Most errors are in people's Wikipedia accounts.)
 * Uncheck the box (☑︎→☐) that says "Treat the above as wiki markup."
 * Remove anything in the text box.
 * Click the blue "" button at the bottom of the page. (The red "" button will reset all of your preference settings, not just the signature.)

After you have done this, the error will be fixed. If you want to have a custom signature instead of the default, then you can change your signature whenever you want. The software will prevent you from accidentally making another invalid signature. More information is available at w:en:Wikipedia:Signatures.

Plain fancy signature
This is the most common error. It is easy to fix.

The problem: Your preferences are set to interpret your custom signature as wikitext. However, your current custom signature does not contain any wikitext.

The solutions: There are two ways to fix this problem. You can reset your signature to the default, or you can fix your signature.


 * Fix your custom signature:
 * Find the signature section in the first tab of Special:Preferences.
 * Uncheck the box (☑︎→☐) that says "Treat the above as wiki markup."
 * Click the blue "" button at the bottom of the page.

No user links
The problem: Your signature does not link to your account's userpage, user talk page, or your contributions.

Wrong user links
The problem: Your signature links to a different user account. This often happens when you set a custom signature and then change your username.

Only interwiki user links
The problem: Your signature does not link to your local account. Some editors set these signatures years ago, before Echo Notifications were available across all the wikis.

HTML linter errors
The problem: Your signature contains HTML errors that result in Special:LintErrors whenever you sign a page.