Wikipedia:Signature types

On the English Wikipedia, there are two primary schools of thought with regards to signatures above and beyond WP:SIG. Unfortunately up until now, the conflict between these two ways of approaching the problem have been irreconcilable with many pages and hours worth of editing being devoted to it (Example). The first is for a uniform signature that would permit easier navigation of various discussion and other talk pages, and that occupies only a small area of the edit box for clarity when editing. The second is that allowing customized signatures helps positively build the community by allowing people to style their appearance (much like how one dresses or grooms oneself for the workplace). This proposal would consist of software change(s) + a newly created project policy to establish two separate signature types and regulate their use.

Furthermore, as MediaWiki installations make their way into the business environment, the ability to mandate a standard signature could be desired by some wiki administrators in order to maintain a professional look/feel.

Signature Types

"Business Formal" Signature

This signature would be required for use on all "official project" and vote pages. As discussed above, having a simple, uniform, signature on these pages will help streamline the process of editing on high signature count pages for a number of users, as well will give a more business-like atmosphere to the Project's administration.

Proposed Templates

Bear in mind that as proposed here these templates do not include the datestamp. Furthermore all text excepting the username must be internationalized/internationalizable, but are presented here in English for simplicity.

1. [[User:Example|]]
2. [[User:Example|]] [[User talk:Example|Talk]]
3. [[User:Example|]] [[Special:Contributions/Example|Contributions]]
4. {{subst:MediaWiki:user|Example}}

"Business Casual" Signature

This signature would be customized by the user and can be used on any other page where a signature would be appropriate. As discussed above, allowing users to have a customized signature (within appropriate boundaries), gives the user the ability to develop an appearance to give first impressions.

Technical Design Discussion

For an initial implementation design, The following diff gives a good starting point for implementing the first proposed formal signature. //TODO: This is based on MW 1.6.5 code, please update with the latest 1.7 code if needed and remove this notice

	# Signatures
+	$username = $user->getName();
+	$userpage = $user->getUserPage();
+	$unText = '[[' . $userpage->getPrefixedText() . '|' . wfEscapeWikiText( $username ) . ']]';
	$sigText = $this->getUserSig( $user );
	$text = strtr( $text, array(
+	'~~~~~~~' => $unText,
+	'~~~~~~' => "$unText $d",
	'~~~~~' => $d,
	'~~~~' => "$sigText $d",
	'~~~' => $sigText
	) );

Potential Caveats

1. If approved, in order to save editor time in enforcing this new policy, we could investigate the ability to add a flag that would always substitute with the formal signature on certain namespaces.
2. As proposed the mappings from wikitext to signatures are static, causing overhead if a Wiki-administrator wants to change the signatures available on his/her site. Therefore we should investigate the ability to put the array of signature substitutions into a global level variable defined initally in DefaultSettings.php and can be overridden in LocalSettings.php.
3. WikiProjects currently reside in the Wikipedia namespace and as a result should probably be moved to new WikiProject and WikiProject talk namespace given the community orientated nature of them (ex. Wikipedia:Esperanza)

Other Criticisms

1. This proposal may be feature creep.
2. If accepted, the software change required by this proposal would likely take a low priority and as a result may take a long time to be implemented while developers are concerned with higher priority feature enhancements.
3. This proposal if accepted could pave the way for the eventual complete banishing of custom signatures.