Typographic conventions change language to language. Hungarian, for example, uses a single en dash (–) instead of the --, and a non-breaking space to separate it from the signature.

There should really be a core message to customize this, instead of a dozen different extensions trying to reimplement it by hand.

Notes from this week's team meeting
There are two key benefits of enabling wikis to customize the signature syntax DiscussionTools
outputs:

1. Primary: making DT signature outputs customizable honors local conventions
2. Secondary: codifying signature prefixes (e.g. -- or –) would enable the comment parser to different between a comment's signature and body with more certainty. This will be helpful when we think about the following:
   • T245225: Implement editing specific comments: becomes easier to just expose the comment body
   • T249579: [EPIC] Usability improvements: make the actions, activity and content within talk pages easier to understand: becomes easier to specify how the signature is presented on the page

In T249861#6078336, @Tgr wrote:

Typographic conventions change language to language. Hungarian, for example, uses a single en dash (–) instead of the --, and a non-breaking space to separate it from the signature.

Good call. Thank you for adding this context, @Tgr.

There should really be a core message to customize this, instead of a dozen different extensions trying to reimplement it by hand.

This sounds like a consideration for how this functionality gets implemented. Assuming this to be true, I've tried to represent it as an "Open question" in the task description; please let me know if you think it needs to be adjusted or if I've assumed incorrectly.

Change 597533 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; owner: Esanders):
[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Make signature prefix customisable

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/597533

In T249861#6078336, @Tgr wrote:

There should really be a core message to customize this, instead of a dozen different extensions trying to reimplement it by hand.

That would be nice but there are a lot of use cases there, and I wouldn't want our work tied up with a config change that could affect dozens of other extensions. We can create a separate task for that and migrate our implementation to a core variable later.

Change 597533 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Make signature prefix customisable

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/597533

In case anyone wants to use this feature, you need to create a page called "MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix" that contains your 'thing' (e.g., an endash, a non-breaking space, etc.).

Is there a way that the Discussions Tool will use the signature setting set up in the user preferences?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal

Does it make sense?

In T249861#6374494, @Samat wrote:

Is there a way that the Discussions Tool will use the signature setting set up in the user preferences?

As far as I know, it does use it. It appends ~~~~ to the message (which is processed by MediaWiki core); this task is about using something like --~~~~ instead of ~~~~.

Yes, you should get your custom signature already. But it's just the custom signature, and some wikis want a dash or a particular kind of space. If you do nothing, then the default is ~~~~ (a single normal space followed by your custom signature and the timestamp).