You can also just type four tildes to trigger the tool

@Esanders, yes I'm aware that you can create a signature (or other mediawiki things like italics or links) by putting in the code into VE... But that's not really the point here...

@Jdforrester-WMF, fair enough that "the toolbar looks the same wherever you go" is a core design principle. I just thought that this would make VE more easy to use on Talkpages, now that Flow has been cancelled. Of course it would be better to have Flow - and I understand that you don't want VE to have 'scope creep' and become the standard for talkpages too, but that makes me wonder why you created this signature button in the first place?

In T125839#2014681, @Wittylama wrote:

@Jdforrester-WMF, fair enough that "the toolbar looks the same wherever you go" is a core design principle. I just thought that this would make VE more easy to use on Talkpages, now that Flow has been cancelled.

Flow has not been cancelled, though…

In T125839#2015157, @Jdforrester-WMF wrote:

Flow has not been cancelled, though…

Well, "maintenance mode" or whatever the official statement said. The end result is the same that it is not being developed and only receiving attention to keep it alive for those places that turned it on before the project was "paused" indefinitely. It remains unclear to me what the best-practice is, or should be? Should VE be used for talkpages until Flow is brought out of deep-freeze, or will VE be developed into a system designed for talkpages specifically once the mainspace development is finalised, or are should we stick with code-editing on talkpages for the indeterminate future?

Flow aside, a signature is not only needed on pages like discussion venues.
You may very well have a page like a wikiproject one where people (luckily) don't discuss, but they enlist, and they often do that by signing (example).
I believe that the signature is only a first, small step toward work needed to make VE available in namespaces which are not the main or the user ones, and which is a very common request which we can't fulfill ATM.

Really good point @Elitre. I'd forgotten about pages where "signup" was the primary activity. Another good example is the wikidata weekly status newsletter subscription page. People are requested to leave not only their name, but also the specific wiki (since we don't yet have 'global user/talk pages yet): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Wikidata

(That's not done through signing -with tildes I mean, though?)

In T125839#2015230, @Elitre wrote:

(That's not done through signing, though?)

You've caught me, editors do not write ~~~~ but copy the URL of their homewiki userpage. So, that is probably the worst example I could have given! It was just the first thing I could think of when thinking of a very active signup page!