Wikipedia talk:Signatures/Archive 12

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Signature size guidelines

The project page says:

• Avoid markup such as <big> and <span style="font-size: 200%;">^{(or more)} tags (which enlarge text); this is likely to disrupt the way that surrounding text displays.

This is sloppy, because <big> increases display size by about (or exactly) 20%, and the use of "<span style="font-size: 200%;">^{(or more)}" implies that, well, 180% would be OK, and I don't think this is the intent. We need to decide what is OK and then say on the project page whatever it is that we decide. Some points to consider:

• I believe the criterion should be one of these three:
  1. No font size increase is allowed for regular text.
  2. Only minor font size increase is allowed (to be defined) for regular text.
  3. Any font size increase is allowed as long as it doesn't affect surrounding text, e.g. by increasing line spacing. (This would allow <big>.)
• Many user signatures wrap graphic characters such as ✉ and ☛ in <big>...</big> or other font-enlarging markup just to bring the graphic to the size of the text, for effects like this: Anomalocaris (✉) and Anomalocaris (☛). I believe this should be allowed.
• Different skins have different default font sizes. In MonoBook, the default size is a little smaller than small, which corresponds to the old and deprecated <font-size="2">. In Vector, the default size is a littler larger than small. At least, these two statements are true on my Windows computer using Firefox.
• My default signature: Anomalocaris (talk) ...
• My signature, small: Anomalocaris (talk)
• 1em should be the same as default: Anomalocaris (talk)
• My signature increased by 6%: Anomalocaris (talk)
• The next full size up from small is medium, corresponding to the old and deprecated <font-size="3">: Anomalocaris (talk). This does not seem to increase line spacing.
• The next full size up from medium is large, corresponding to the old and deprecated <font-size="4">: Anomalocaris (talk). This is large enough to increase line spacing.

I have been notifying users whose signatures have Obsolete HTML tags and other lint errors, encouraging them to change their signatures to be HTML5-compliant. I have avoided notifying users with font size issues, pending my writing of this posting and getting a response. Now that I've written it, will people please comment on whether they agree that the signature size guideline should be one of my three, and if so, which one they most agree with. If rule #2, please describe your proposed rule further, such as, don't increase your font size more than ____. —Anomalocaris (talk) 23:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

For the record, at least in my browser, Anomalocaris (✉) and Anomalocaris (☛) increse the line spacing, as do the 6% and <font-size="3"> examples. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:00, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Ahecht: Interesting. I use Windows 7, Mozilla Firefox, and MonoBook. May I ask what is your operating system, browser, and Wiki skin? —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:17, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

And I inserted "1em should be the same as default"; to get increase of 6% I used 1.06em; it would be noteworthy if 1em isn't the same as default. —Anomalocaris (talk) 01:30, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

At the time I was using IE11 (I know, I know, but it's mandated on my work computer) and vector, now I'm using Chrome on Windows 7 and Vector. I recreated your example in my sandbox and took a screenshot, and marked the distance between bullets using drawing software: File:Ahecht line spacing 18-Jan-2018.png. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

@Oshwah, Fixuture, Zzuuzz, PamD, Evolution and evolvability, Olidog, JamesLucas, Mr. Guye, Dan Harkless, David Biddulph, Rich Farmbrough, and Sonic678: Your comments are welcome here and also in #Excessive text shadow? and #line break at the beginning of a signature on this page. —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:34, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Signature font size, line spacing, text-wrapping, formatting, etc will mostly stay consistent because of HTML - but as mentioned above, people will see and report some differences that will be due to having different browsers, Operating Systems, Wikipedia scripts and skins, end-user screen resolutions, and so on... but I think those differences will be within a small margin. I believe that the signature policy currently states that colors, font, formatting, and size can be customized to the user's discretion, so long as it doesn't alter the spacing, margins, or anything else with text or page elements that surrounds the signature. I'm going to read through the discussion and all of the responses in-depth; I'm curious to know exactly what's prompting this discussion about signature sizes. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:21, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Oshwah: The world is moving to HTML5, and Wikipedia will have to move with it. HTML5 disallows four tags: <font>, <tt>, <center>, and <strike>. There are a number of sloppy uses of HTML and Wiki markup that gave reasonable results in HTML4 and will give different results in HTML5. Wikipedians are working to clean things up throughout Wikipedia. One source of non-HTML5 compliance is user signatures. I have been working to notify users with non-HTML5-compliant signatures. In the process, I noticed many signatures that don't comply with WP:Signatures, but the guidelines on size are inconsistent. I don't want to ask anyone to make their signature HTML5 compliant and then come back later and ask them to make their signature size compliant, so I started this discussion to generate clarity, and when there is consensus and the project page is suitably updated, I will then notify users with signatures with size issues.

I think your comment means, "It is OK if a signature results in very slight increase in line spacing for some combinations of browsers, Operating Systems, Wikipedia scripts and skins, end-user screen resolutions, and so on ... as long as it's very slight." Is that a fair rephrasing of your opinion? —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:59, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Anomalocaris - Sure, you could say that. I'm okay with giving editors the freedom to customize their signatures (obviously to a point... lol). So long as the signature doesn't change or interfere with any of the text or elements that surround it (signatures that are sized too large would obviously do this), I don't see an issue with giving users some leeway with size, etc... If there's a specific situation or "fun" issue in the past that gives someone pause with my thoughts here, please let me know so I can take a look. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 23:06, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

HTML5 doesn't "disallow" <font>, <tt>, <center> or <strike>. It has marked them as obsolete along with a whole bunch of other elements. This says "Elements in the following list are entirely obsolete, and must not be used by authors", but that doesn't mean that browsers will stop supporting them. The likelihood is that browsers will continue to support them, with the same behaviour as documented for HTML 4.01 or even HTML 3.2, since there are a lot of legacy webpages out there which aren't going to be updated any time soon. We need not panic to eliminate these tags entirely; what we should be concerned about is sloppy use of these tags that in the past has been cleaned up by HTML Tidy, which as recently noted, will be removed from the MediaWiki software in the not too distant future. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't mind seeing enlarged signatures unless they are so big that the readers' eyes are drawn straight to the signature rather than the actual discussion. This is the same for signatures with shadows. Olidog (talk) 19:05, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

line break at the beginning of a signature

The project page says:

• Do not add line breaks (<br />), which can also negatively affect nearby text display. The use of non-breaking spaces to ensure that the signature displays on one line is recommended.

There are a number of users who have <br /> at the beginning of their signature. For talk page comments, this would seem to be OK, because they could have put the <br /> in manually just before the four tildes or they could have put the four tildes on a new line. My question is, are there any signable templates that look bad if the signature starts with <br />? —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:10, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there are examples of this causing a problem. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:25, 29 January 2018 (UTC).

I've never seen a <br /> "negatively affect nearby text display". I use it all the time as a whitespaceless paragraph break, such as here.
<br /> works fine in {{atop}} parameter 1; I can't say for sure about other templates, but I'm somewhat obsessive about neatness and I think I would remember it if I had ever seen it cause even a minor display problem in a template. That said, I'm quite sure I haven't seen it in every template that might be used in a talk space.
I don't see much benefit in breaking before the sig, considering that surely upwards of 99.99% of editors don't, but that doesn't mean there should be guidance against it. Breaks within the sig would offend me even more, if anybody does that, but I would still oppose guidance against it.
As long as we have signature customization, some editors are going to have signatures that offend a large number of editors. If there were a proposal on the table today, I would probably support it despite liking my customized, community-friendly sig. In the end, we're here to build an encyclopedia, not engage in self-expression. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:45, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Mandruss: My question isn't if a <br /> "negatively affect nearby text display". Again, my question is "are there any signable templates that look bad if the signature starts with <br />?" —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:59, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Right, my best answer to the question is buried somewhere in there. Sorry for the rest. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Here's a page where signatures should not begin with a line break: Wikipedia:Department of Fun/Word Association/Players. (The instructions say, "PLEASE INSERT A NUMBER SIGN, FOLLOWED BY THREE TILDES. Probably, some users signed with something other than three tildes, because there aren't a lot of talk links.) Are there other pages like this, where people are encouraged to just sign with three tildes as an entry in a numbered or bulleted list? On any such page, signatures should not begin with a line break. —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Username must be copy/paste-able

Follow-up from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Username should be c/p-able. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

... after a put-down. phab number unknown. - DePiep (talk) 20:58, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

We should get rid of this situation: the visible name does not match the actual name. (colors -- if you want to, but spelling changes are unacceptable). A bit like {{DISPLAYTITLE}}. -DePiep (talk) 20:48, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• I feel like I've seen this sort of proposal a few times before, but FWIW Support any proposal that improves correspondence between displayed signatures and usernames except where WP:NLS applies. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:08, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
• There is WP:SIGLINK already which helps somewhat. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:27, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• I would argue that it shouldn't be necessary to mouse-over a signature to determine the name of the user, and to click on it to copy the name before returning to discussion to paste it. The issue I've run into is when I'm looking for something a user said -- either in a given thread/page, or when unsure which page it was on via general search -- without digging through every one of their diffs in the histories of possible pages. This is sometimes important to understand past discussions and contextualize those in the present, not to mention when it comes to evading scrutiny for problematic behavior by rendering unusable (or at least difficult) on-page and wiki-wide searches. I find this most troubling when users introduce non-Latin characters where their username does not contain any (seemingly directly contrary to the spirit of WP:NLS), but I should say that a prohibition on just that has been proposed in the past (not by me) without success. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:42, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• (ec) Must say, the top link (to WPT) is active too. Should not become forumshopping indeed. - DePiep (talk) 21:45, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

bug?

Whenever I sign with four tildas, my comment gets the following text: - " Vince Calegon 11:52, 7 April 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vince Calegon (talk • contribs)" Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? Ironically, Vince Calegon 12:57, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

@Vince Calegon: Your signature is clearly not the default signature but instead is a custom signature, and it violates WP:SIGLINK since it contains no links at all. I suggest that you go to Preferences and turn off the option "Treat the above as wiki markup." --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:59, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, I've done that. Curious, though, that above is the first time it hasn't happened (after "ironically, "). I wrote ironically becuase I thought it would be apt whether or not the bug occurred, and it didn't?! Vince Calegon (talk) 08:22, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Signing comments on archived talk pages

Is one allowed to sign unsigned comments on archived talk pages? Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 14:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

@Interqwark: WP:TPO#unsigned doesn't mention archives. But there are an awful lot of archives, and an awful lot of unsigned posts in them. Where is it that you want to do this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:23, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I did it here. The post may be fourteen years old, but the signature might make it easier for people to read the arhive. It would make sense if this were an exception to the do-not-edit-archived-talk-pages rule, but I’m not sure, which is why I’m asking. If it’s not allowed, I will undo my revision. Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 20:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It's so old that I would have left it alone, but as you've now done it, leave it as it now is. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:35, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

All right. Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 00:02, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Should we disallow emojis in signatures?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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_

Should we disallow emojis in signatures? They are very distracting and not all browsers or operating systems are able to render them. Some of them may also make lines higher. —AE (talk • contributions) 11:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: The use of emojis in signatures or any limitations regarding their use in signatures (if inserted as text and not as a link to an internal picture) is not explicitly defined under the signature policy. Note that this section refers explicitly to links to internal images being added to a signature. Emojis behave as text; therefore, most of the reasons listed in that section (namely, being a drain on server resources, risk of someone uploading a new version of it, etc.) do not apply to emojis. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 11:49, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Oshwah's statement that emojis don't fall under the use of images in signatures, and that they behave as text. Also, "emoji" might be a very broad term, e.g. the pencil character in my signature (which is used in many) could possibly be considered an emoji. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 12:29, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

  @SemiHypercube: This is not related to WP:SIGIMAGE. Oshwah's comment is only for clarifying that "emojis" is not explicitly defined under the signature policy. I am now proposing an idea that emojis of all kind should be disallowed, which is separate from images. —AE (talk • contributions) 12:34, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

  @Abelmoschus Esculentus: I think you might want to notify users who already use emojis in their signatures of this RfC. Also, it might not matter that much that emojis might not render, as long as the signature still shows who the user is with text. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 12:38, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

  @SemiHypercube: Disagree with your first sentence, as that would effectively be "reverse canvassing". If one is prohibited from padding a discussion with editors who will agree with them, they also shouldn't be required to pad it with those who will disagree with them. It's currently looking like the proposal is headed for a fail anyway, but the point needed to be made. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:52, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:ENJOY. WP:SIGPROB covers the situations where the use of emoji in a signature is disruptive, and indeed some Unicode characters may mess with line heights or be difficult to recognize or not render at all on some systems, but whether or not they make a signature inappropriate is rooted in how they're used. They are not inherently disruptive any more than using the letter É in a signature is inherently disruptive. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:41, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose because what is or isn't treated as an emoji is up to the whim of the authors of a particular browser. For example, the symbol for the constellation Aries, or the first point of Aries, ♈, is treated as an emoji by some browsers, even though it was in use by astronomers for hundreds of years before emoji were invented. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:06, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, i.e. allow emojis. We allow them in usernames; no reason I can see that we shouldn't allow them in signatures. Nor do I see a real distinction between emojis and other non-linguistic Unicode characters (obviously, I'm biased; at what point does my old-school head by way of white circle with two dots get considered an emoji?) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:12, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Writ Keeper, we no longer allow them in usernames. See WP:NOEMOJI. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:37, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
    • Huh, I did not know that, thanks. I still don't like outright banning them, but my defense just got a lot less cogent, so I'll strike it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:44, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Writ Keeper. Since we allow them in username we cannot ban them in signatures. This is essentially for pragmatic reasons. If we're to consider, and enforce this, then they must be disallowed in username first. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• Ammarpad, see above. We do not allow them in usernames anymore. Per my comment below, I also don't think we need a policy on emoji use in signatures, and have never once read this page or anything it says, so I think this RfC is a bit of a waste of time since common sense should just prevail, but for those who may think we should write something down about it, the fact re: usernames may be important. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:39, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• Thank you. I didn't bother to check, but relied on Writ Keeper and it seems they too got that part wrong. Struck my oppose since its basis is invalid. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:54, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• Use common sense. If they are like Donald Trung's previous crazy signatures, then yes, they should be banned as disruptive. Otherwise, who cares? The question is disruption, not emojis. Can they be disruptive (yes), but are they always (no). In these cases, we deal with them case by case. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:37, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Opposes We have existing policies on signatures and do not need feature creep. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 15:22, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose And can we stop having RFCs on signatures? Everyone finds certain things "distracting". The ones that are truly disruptive will be handled by the admins. Let's adopt a I know it when I see it standard as opposed to doing an RFC on every single annoying signature thing. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 16:28, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
  • That would require an RfC for that.
     — Berean Hunter (talk) 18:44, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
    • And rightly so, and I would Strong Oppose. No discussion has ever wasted the time of anybody who didn't choose to have it wasted. Don't seek to dictate what editors can discuss. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:04, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
      • I'm not sure where I stated that I'm favoring a I know it when I see it standard for saving time, or that I want to "dictate" what others can say. There is no deadline on Wikipedia. The reason I think we should adopt a simpler standard is because excessive rules about signatures are too complicated, arbitrary, and burdensome. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 20:43, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
        • You're entitled to hold and state your opinions about what is disruptive in signatures. You're entitled to feel that if those who find certain signatures disruptive are in the minority, their opinions shouldn't count for anything in the eyes of those who do not (or in the eyes of a closer). You're entitled to hold and state your opinions about the effectiveness of the current system as to signatures. Many would disagree with you on any or all of those points. If you want to propose adding something to WP:PERENNIAL about having RFCs on signatures, please do so in a separate RfC. Otherwise we generally don't suppress entire areas of discussion simply because some editors feel they are a waste of time. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:08, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC: Should we disallow text highlighting in signatures?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Simple question. shouldwe disallow text highlighting in signatures? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:56, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

• Yes - I've long wondered why we don't disallow highlighting in signatures. I get wanting flexibility for users to express themselves in different ways (obviously, I use some custom formatting in my own), and I would say that using different colors for the text seems reasonable. Using text highlighting does not. I find highlighted text incredible distracting to the point I have trouble focusing on the discussion as a whole, and trouble seeing the signatures of other participants. I suspect I'm not alone in that. We should not let signatures pull eyeballs from the substance of the discussion to draw focus on a single user's name. I've thought about proposing this RfC several times in the past, but looking at this page just now reminded me of how awful the effect is to my concentration. I imagine I'm not alone, but I suppose it's possible. (Sorry to woodensuperman, with whom I have no quarrel, but whose signature is the one I'm talking about on that page. It's not the most egregious I've ever seen, but all I see are woodensuperman billboards all over the page). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:56, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment - for clarity, I do not intend this proposal to affect signatures in archives and other pages on which they already exist; just future use. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:56, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Weak no While I agree with your assessment of the signature in question, I think it can be doneacceptably. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:01, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  People who want to highlight don't often use highlighting that's barely perceptible, which is the reason your example is less distracting. I suspect, depending on people's monitors, that even those off-whites, when scattered throughout a page, would be distracting. There's just ultimately such a very very weak reason to allow it and, IMO, very good reasons to disallow. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:06, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• No - highlighted signatures are fine, most of the time, or rather they're not problematic because they use highlighting. Those that are low-contrast or used to apply hidden text are an accessibility issue and should be disallowed, and for some users they can be excessively large, but all of this should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The one you pointed out I don't see a problem with, personally. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:02, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  I don't see a problem with, personally So to those like me who find it distracting, you would say, what, that it's more important that users be able to make their names glow than it is for participant comprehension/engagement? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:10, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• Meh, I guess it depends mostly on the contrast. I don't mind them anywhere as much as increased font size. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:04, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  This. Ditto decreased font size, and shadows, and anything that breaks line spacing. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:10, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• No as not all highlighting is bad (just on this page, I see RedRose's signature in the immediate above section and that doesn't set off any visual alarms). I do think that if the highlighting is determined to be too heavy like the example line provided, that we can request users to change, but that should be a consensus-driven discussion, not set by policy/guidelines. --Masem (t) 19:05, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  we can request users to change Disagreed. I mean, yes, we can ask, but I've seen multiple cases of people being asked to change, and since policy allows it and there are countless examples of "well it's not as bad as that other one" I've only ever seen users change it because of their own good will. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:08, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  Then we add language that says that one's signature could be found to be visually difficult to read by a consensus of editors and such signatures are expected to be changed for better consensus, with continued violation dealt with by community processes. --Masem (t) 19:24, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  The colours in my signature are carefully chosen to have a contrast that is high enough to be WCAG 2 AAA Compliant. See MOS:CONTRAST. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:09, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) No Not all highlighting is bad, plus it also makes it easier to see one's signature. I'd only oppose using colors that are too similar to each other, like this as it is it might be too hard to see for colorblind people, or those using greyscale or something similar. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 19:15, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  There are scripts, widely available in fact, that make it easy to see your own signature. I use one, in fact. You can even color particular other people's signatures if you want. The difference with those scripts is that only you see them. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:18, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Personally, I don't like highlights for the same reason as shadows: It makes certain signatures stick out, as if those users are somehow more important. Plus, I use the admin highlighter script and thus highlights cause false positives. If we don't want to deny people the use of highlights (which I would not object to), maybe the signature policy can be amended to force those users to include a certain "class" in their HTML tags? That way, users (like me) who don't like the highlighting can disable it via their common.css. Unfortunately, disabling background-color for all tags would affect too many other uses (unlike text-shadow). Regards SoWhy 19:44, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Meh Is it really worth it for the number of times it's going to side track substantive discussions for a policy that is essentially trying to forbid bad taste in signatures? GMG^talk 21:14, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  @GreenMeansGo: Two issues with your comment. First, perhaps I misunderstand you, but how would it sidetrack a substantive discussion to advise an editor on their UTP that their signature violates policy?
  And this is not about "bad taste"—i.e. aesthetics—but about human factors. Visual distractions draw the eye away from the text, detracting from reading focus and comprehension, undermining the communication that is the whole point of talk spaces (and which already faces multiple other obstacles that are unavoidable). Do we really need to cite scientific studies to make this point? Would it sway a significant number of !votes if we did? ―Mandruss ☎ 08:07, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

• Is this really enough of a problem to do an RFC?  MPJ-DK  22:47, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• yes. although I guess here's one test of whether it's necessary: MPJ-DK, would you be willing to change your signature to make it less distracting? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:34, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• Sure, how about something in a hot pink text? ;-) I have never had any complaints before, but if it is generally a problem I got no issues with it.  MPJ-DK  00:32, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• You know I feel a little "Meh" now with the signature. But still, better than having it in some sort of unreadable font, emojis or runes or whatnot. Turned it off for now, will design a new, more subdued one at some point. MPJ-DK (talk) 00:40, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:45, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• Shouldn't this be a common-sense application of the existing policy on colour in signatures? It requires signatures to be "sparing with colour" and to "not cause disruption to other editors"; doesn't that cover the eggregious uses of highlighting? – Uanfala (talk) 09:51, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, it should be. In practice, it is not and never will be. See my !vote below. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:15, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. Non-white backgrounds are overly distracting to the eye to at least many editors. If that's not true for you, please bear in mind that not everybody is like you. I have said before that I would support elimination of custom signatures if we can't impose some bright-line limits on them. The notion that we have effective ways to deal with signatures that are over the line is belied by the indisputable fact that we have dozens or hundreds of signatures that are over the line, many of them years old. The fact is that it requires an inordinate amount of editor time just to get one signature improved, and even then there is never any guarantee that the time expenditure will not be a complete waste. In the end, we are here to build and maintain an encyclopedia, not engage in self-expression, and the former must come first. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:15, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• Up to a point - anything which defies MOS:ACCESS, or doesn't work with the "Use a black background with green text" gadget should be discouraged. Not sure how far "discouraged" should go. Cabayi (talk) 10:56, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - there are a lot of issues I see with custom signatures, this being one of the worse ones. --Gonnym (talk) 11:51, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• No, Gaudy, attention-grabbing signatures are annoying, and I suspect often used to make one's points in discussions more prominent. However some cases of highlighting are generally fine. I think this change would affect some "innocent" users, while not fully achieving the goal of "don't have annoying signatures". For what it's worth, in researching here I discovered the unclutter script which can be used to "standardise" others' signatures. A better solution would be to make a tool like this a simple one-click install from the standard user preferences. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 13:05, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• Meh. If a particular user has a signature you can't read, politely ask them to change it. This is true for highlighting, drop shadows, weird fonts, blink tags, or anything else. shoy (reactions) 13:31, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

  That's precisely my point, and per WP:BLUDGEON this will be the last time I make it. When you politely ask someone to change their signature, the response is often (at best) a polite refusal to do so. With a few exceptions, and there are exceptions to everything, it just doesn't work. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• No, as long as accessibility requirements are met — I'm obviously a bit biased since I have highlighting in my signature, but I don't think we should be banning highlighting as long as the contrast ratio requirements laid out in WP:COLOR are met. This would disallow should, text, andin, which don't meet the WCAG AA 4.5 contrast ratio level for normal-sized text, and possibly disallow disallow, which meets AA but not the stricter AAA level of 7.0 (however, even our standard redlinks don't meet AAA, so that may be too high a bar). Note that, if applied uniformly, this would also disallow the non-highlighted signatures of xaosflux, SemiHypercube, and GreenMeansGo (plus the telephone icon in Mandruss's signature), just to use examples from this discussion that don't meet the AA-level contrast requirements for normal-sized text. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 14:45, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

  Since I was named and pinged, I'll respond. The contrast guidelines apply to text, not solid symbols. Obviously more contrast is needed for the thin lines that make up letters and numbers. In any case, assuming a few weeks of experience with Wikipedia talk spaces, one doesn't need to recognize my icon as an old-time desk telephone (very likely, many younger editors don't) to know that it's very likely a user talk page link. Unlike text, it would work equally well as an amorphous blob, so it's fine if that is what it looks like to a few editors. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:30, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• No. Changing a sig due to highlighted text should only be necessary if it presents accessibility issues, e.g. to colorblind people. Users of highlighted sigs should use caution with regards to this but it should not be disallowed. This also seems like WP:BIKESHED. *tests sig on color-blindness testing website* (COI disclosure: well, just look at my signature...) — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 14:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• I am not colorblind, and I find signatures like yours detrimental to my ability to focus on/follow talk pages. It's not the readability of the signature itself, as people talk about re: contrast. It's the contrast between the highlighting of the signature and the rest of the text on the page and, well, does what highlighting is supposed to do and draws your eyes away from everything else to the highlighted text. You have linked to WP:BIKESHED. Not one I've seen before. From the nutshell, I take it you are waving this off as a "trifling detail." — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:35, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Comment: Users who find signatures disruptive can always use the script which simplifies them — I don’t have the link off the top of my head but it’s at WP:US/L. Apologies for putting the discussion off-course. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 17:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Very un-intuitive and such a hassle for something that should be the default. Looking at that page I still don't even have an idea which script does that. --Gonnym (talk) 22:07, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

User:Kephir/gadgets/unclutter. What I will say is that the setting should be more readily accessible (i.e. not a gadget or userscript). At the very least the default signature is problematic as it excludes the popular contribs link. — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 7:02 pm, Today (UTC−4)

• Comment - This thread was not intended to be about the readability of signatures (i.e. what almost everyone talking about accessibility is referring to). It is about the function of highlighting, which pulls attention away from the substance of the text and to the signature. When you have a book page with highlighting, it draws your eyes to those words disproportionately to the rest of the page. Users who highlight their names are doing just the same. For some people, clearly this does not pose a focus/concentration/reading comprehension problem. I opened this thread because it's a significant disruption for me, and I presume others (who are not colorblind and who don't use a screenreader). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:39, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. In fact, let's get rid of all custom signatures, which add to clutter and loading times (speaking as a dial-up editor), and are often abused to disguise the user account. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:29, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• No as it is not a real problem. What I find more problematic, is users whose signature text does not match their user name. When I want to copy and paste, it ends up with signature rather than real name. Slightly annoying are those signatures that do not fit in the space and push the lines apart. coloured surrounds do not exhaust the coloured pixels in the monitor, only draw attention. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:59, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• I don't think so. How users choose to express themselves should be up to them. Colourful outfits are also distracting, perhaps we should all wear matching jumpsuits? If there is a clarity issue, or a colourblindness accessibility issue (e.g. red on green), then fine. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 23:42, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, but I want there to be an exception for acceptably subtle highlighting, per SarekOfVulcan and Redrose64's signature. Not sure how we'd achieve that, though - put a bound on HSV coordinates? Enterprisey (talk!) 06:32, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
• What is the case against enforcing "AA-level contrast requirements for normal-sized text"? Two birds, one stone.
  Also, last I checked, User:Kephir/gadgets/unclutter did a decent job of standardizing display of all signatures, if you'd like that for yourself. czar 14:39, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

And here’s another one: User:Pointillist/reformat-signatures.css — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 20:28, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - Note to those suggesting that a script or gadget would be a solution that eliminates the need for the proposed policy change:
  All such processing is in addition to the normal core processing, not instead of it. Therefore it will slow down page rendering. Furthermore, the closer one stays to the "mainstream" software environment—i.e. what most other editors are using—the more quickly any problems affecting them will be detected and fixed. I don't know about gadgets, but Wikimedia's developers take no responsibility for keeping home-grown scripts working, so you use them at your own risk and are responsible for seeking any fixes to problems. For anybody who wants fast and hassle-free Wikipedia software, these add-ons are not good solutions and are therefore poor arguments against mainstream improvements. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:28, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

  They don't take responsibility for keeping gadgets working either, even though some of them (like HotCat) are found on the vast majority of Wikimedia projects. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:12, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

• No. As to the accessability claim, many sigs don;t completely match their users' names. To really know who signed a particular message, you need to either load the wikitext or follow the link in the sig - and this is true even for plain text sigs. Fo4r example, the plain text of GreenMeansGo's sig is "GMG", not "GreenMeansGo". As to the claim of focis, a claim could be made that when dealing with a long piece of text, you want to find its end easily - and these sigs certainly help doing that. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:01, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

  The signatures in question are extreme overkill for finding the end of a comment; one like mine works just fine for that purpose, without being overly distracting to the eye. If x is good, it does not necessarily follow that 5x is five times better.
  The issue about whether the signature shows the actual username has nothing to do with the question in this RfC. We are deciding whether to continue to allow non-white backgrounds in signatures. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:31, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: I have always looked at signatures as a small insight into the character of the user, and a hint about how they are likely to interact. A loud and aggressive signature surely says something about the user, as does one that draws your attention from the content of the message. Similarly one that does not match the username may be like that to clarify or obscure, or even to intentionally make it difficult to reply, or maybe that the user doesn't care about the convenience of others or just does not know. In my own case I changed to what seemed to me a slightly less impersonal effect a long time ago, before I understood the possible inconvenience it might cause in replies. I think that by now some people may find it mildly confusing if I changed back, much like the the mild confusion if I was to change my username to match the signature, so I have left it. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:20, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
• Again?: See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Disallow personalized signatures. -Arch dude (talk) 04:38, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

  @Arch dude: No, not again. This is a proposal to disallow one aspect of personalized signatures, not all personalized signatures. They are very different propositions and PERENNIAL certainly does not apply here. However, as I suggested earlier, I think that perennial proposal will become more likely to pass if we reject all bright-line (objective) limits on personalized signatures. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:09, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

• No I support the simple approach that as long as the signature is reasonable readable, we should leave it to the discretion of editors how they format their signatures. Monty₈₄₅ 03:12, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
• No See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Disallow personalized signatures. You can still read the username. More problematic issue is when the username does not match with the signature though I don't encourage an RfC to solve that issue either. Anatoliatheo (talk) 09:50, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

  Anatoliatheo, I'm undecided on this proposal thus far (leaning no), but the perennial proposal you're linking to is different from this proposal. We're not disallowing all personalized signatures, just a subset of them which are potentially disruptive. This is no different from a clarification of our existing WP:SIGAPP policy, which states Your signature must not blink, scroll, or otherwise cause inconvenience to or annoy other editors. Mz7 (talk) 19:13, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

• No If the signature is easily readable then it's fine. Most highlighted signatures are easy to read. – BrandonXLF ^(t@lk) 15:33, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

  This one isn't. Note to Oshawott 12: you have been mentioned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:59, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

  Hi there Redrose64! Per Mandruss’s request, I have changed my signature to be more visible. Note to Mandruss: You have been pinged. It now looks like this: Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 23:14, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

  There's already guidelines preventing that. – BrandonXLF ^(t@lk) 12:12, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

• No per Ahecht. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) wumbolo ^^^ 21:10, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
• No for completely disallowing them. I am fine with them provided that there is enough contrast for the text in the signature to be readable and it doesn't unduly impair colorblind people per MOS:COLOR. EclipseDude (talk) 02:25, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• No not a problem —AE (talk • contributions) 04:08, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• No So long as they are readable. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 01:17, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
• Yes: there are a few signatures I like with subtle highlighting, but far more which are terribly tacky and distracting. We need to get a better grip on the sort of nonsense that some people use in signatures—shadows, lines and lines of code, accessibility violations, multicoloured monstrosities. Getting rid of highlighting is a start. I should note that I like creativity and a bit of variety in signatures, but it should be minimalistic when it's going to be displayed alongside mostly plaintext. — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 00:57, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
• No. Unnecessary instruction creep. Also if someone has a distinctive signature, it makes it easier for me to follow their posts in a discussion. If someone has a signature that causes problems, there are already sanctions available if they refuse to change it. O Still Small Voice of Clam (formerly Optimist on the run) 11:37, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

  @Voice of Clam: If we already have effective ways to deal with the problem, how do you explain the magnitude of the problem today? Or, is it your opinion that said problem is overblown by supporters of this proposal? If one's initial complaint is not enough, are they to take the issue to WP:ANI for a democratic vote on the signature? If so, why do you suppose that almost never happens?
  These are not rhetorical questions, I would sincerely like to hear direct and cogent responses to them. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:59, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

  • I don't think that anyone has yet established the magnitude of the problem. So far, we're all talking about this from our personal experience, with a couple of anecdotal examples. What we've established so far is that a couple of editors have the personal perception that they see annoying/distracting signatures too often, and that other editors say that that they rarely see such signatures. Maybe we're reading different pages? (It wouldn't surprise me a bit if these problems turned up more frequently in certain subject areas, or at ANI rather than VPT, etc.) Maybe we have different ideas of what constitutes a problematic signature, so one editor's "annoying" is another editor's idea of "good"? Whatever the source of the disconnect, we don't seem to have a shared understanding of the actual facts yet. "Facts", IMO, look like someone counting signatures on high-traffic pages and reporting the percentage that seem annoying. If we knew that a certain percentage of signatures were annoying because of highlighting, then we could contemplate making a rule about highlighting. But otherwise it's feeling like WP:CREEP to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
    • It does not seem, to me, that magnitude plays much of a role in this discussion. Perhaps what you're saying is that some people would be convinced if some magnitude were demonstrated. I'm not seeing that, though. It seems much more about the basic idea of whether someone considers text highlighting in a signature to be annoying. My sense, based on this is that some people find them distracting, some people find it distracting but don't want it to be against the rules, some people think our existing rules already cover it, and some people don't find it distracting. The accessibility thing does seem to have become part of the discussion, but I don't know why. This was never about the readability of signatures, but the readability of everything other than the signature. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:40, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
• No. A blanket ban on all highlighting is unnecessarily restrictive. — Newslinger talk 12:05, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Meta: Why the current policy does not work

Say I'm an editor with a signature that violates the WP:SIGAPP policy against "disruptive" signatures. I've had the signature for years, and there are many signatures that are equally bad or worse. Am I going to change it because of one complaint? Nope. Two complaints? Three? Even if ten editors complained, I could still reason that many more haven't complained. Why should I change my beloved signature to placate such a minuscule minority? The current system of signature enforcement assumes quite wrongly that most editors (1) are aware of the policy, and (2) will complain to a signature's owner if they feel that it's disruptive. That is not even close to reality.

The only luck I've had with getting signatures changed was with brand new editors, and that consumed a lot of my time—first persuading them that a change was needed, and then helping them with the technical parts of choosing a compliant signature. I don't care to do that very often. For the hundreds of "established" disruptive signatures, I've given up even trying. Since I see someone else trying very rarely, I gather I'm fairly typical in that. Most editors familiar with the Wikipedia "me first" culture understand that any complaint would most likely be futile.

The proposal in this RfC doesn't completely solve the problem, as it only addresses one type of disruptive signature. But it would make a definite improvement. The comment would change from "In my opinion your signature violates the SIGAPP policy" to "Your signature violates the SIGAPP policy, which was recently revised to disallow non-white backgrounds." I think most editors would respond to the latter; even if one in ten does not, we still will have made a very significant improvement to Wikipedia talk spaces. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:41, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. The reason I don't ask people to change their signature with any regularity is because there's no solid basis for doing so. Except in extreme cases of errors and line heights being changed, I've been told no or ignored every time, I think, until the above exchange. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:49, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

There are also those who will test the limits of what they can get away with.

I am not sure that there really is that much of a "me first" culture. It is possibly just that the "me firsters" are so much more visible.

I would cheerfully support a software solution to automatically revert to default any signature that fails accessability or breaks page formatting. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:40, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Based on how this RfC is going, it seems clear that a lot of people do object to some uses of text highlighting, but perhaps not to the extent that they think it's worth disallowing in the guideline. (We'll see I guess). Regardless, it does seem ripe for an essay. Hence: Wikipedia:Don't use a billboard signature. "Billboard" is a word I keep coming back to in terms of their function/effect, and seems like a snappy name for an essay maybe. Thoughts? Edits? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:40, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

New case in point, FWIW, here. New editor wants their signature to resemble a Pokeball. I tried and failed. Add one distracting sig to the mix because too many editors insist that the existing policy is adequate. Sigh. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:55, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Points for creativity, but yeah... incredibly distracting as usual, and perfectly within the rules (as is almost anything, depending on the random group of people who show up to argue about ambiguity for any given instance). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:35, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

No, Mandruss, you did mine perfectly. Thank you very much. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 23:18, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

For the benefit of those who have highlighted sigs in order to help them find their own talk page comments: User:PleaseStand/Comment highlighter can do this for you, and only you. My sig renders as a simple blue link for everyone else, but when I see it it is in highlighter yellow with white text. There’s plenty of other options for whatever you find most eye-catching. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:07, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. And then there is Ctrl+F or your platform's equivalent "find" function. No script required for that purpose, and your computer does the finding for you, saving you some effort and virtually eliminating error. In the process you might find some references by others to your username which you missed.
Not that anybody's listening, of course. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:19, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

For a while I was using a maple leaf emoji in my signature, not necessarily so I could find my comments but that was a side benefit. Then a bunch of other Canucks started doing it too. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:44, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removing images from signatures

Should images in signatures be removed from edits? example — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 22:45, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that too. I just figured it wasn't the time maybe to talk about the finer points of bureaucracy with a user that had ~100 edits and by all accounts probably means well. GMG^talk 22:47, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Is this controversial? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:35, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pythoncoder: Images in sigs are against policy, see WP:SIGIMAGE. Their removal is valid, per WP:TPO#sigclean. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Changing signatures

How do I change my signature after I am done making it? [[User:Nikospatras|<span style="background color:#201c1c; color:#4c5bcc NikosPatras <span/>]] [[User talk:Nikospatras|<span style="color:#000000">'''^{[Why won't you talk with me?]}'''</span>]] (talk) 19:38, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

@Nikospatras: The process should be explained here: Wikipedia:Signatures#Customizing_your_signature. - FlightTime (open channel) 19:40, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

@Nikospatras: Please don't set that as your signature: it's way too long, and the markup is horrific. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:34, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, thank you @Redrose64: I didn't check that :P - FlightTime (open channel) 23:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

How long is too long and how do I fix the markup? --[[User:Nikospatras|<span style="background color:#201c1c; color:#4c5bcc NikosPatras <span/>]] [[User talk:Nikospatras|<span style="color:#000000">'''^{[Why won't you talk with me?]}'''</span>]] (talk) 10:57, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

This page is for discussing improvements to the associated "project page", Wikipedia:Signatures, and sometimes for seeking clarification or interpretation of something on that page. It's not for how-to questions such as these. This is explained at the top of this page, with links to the proper venues. Before posting on any page in a talk space for the first time, please read the notices at the top; they are there for a reason. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

@Nikospatras: For a start, it's 401 characters where we permit 255, see WP:SIGLEN. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:53, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Global signatures

People who watch this page may be interested in m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Miscellaneous/Global signature. The idea is that you can set a custom signature once and have it (if you want) get used at all the wikis.

(Remember that the wishlist is approval voting only, so "oppose votes" are pointless. That said, comments are normally read for every proposal that wins, so comments on that page about implementation ideas or potential problems that haven't been mentioned yet are likely to be very helpful.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Trailing UTC required

I've added:

"All signature timestamps must end with the trailing "(UTC)". This is mandatory and required by archiving bots for them to function correctly. Signatures that interfere with the archiving bots are considered disruptive and editors may be blocked for it."

I'm not sure if this got lost in editing but the trailing UTC has been required for a long time. This needs to be clearly encoded. Leaving extra marks after the closing parenthesis fouls the bots.

I've noticed that new editors are taking suggestions from somewhere and creating signatures that are doing exactly that.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 11:30, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Is that even technically possible? Isn't the timestamp added after the code for the signature? Or is it just that they're typing ~~~~(Unicode characters) when they edit? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:30, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

If they type just three tildes, they get a signature without timestamp. They may be adding a customised timestamp after that, in the same edit. Like this: --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 2:57 pm (UTC), 23 March 2019. This is not recommended. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:57, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Guide for adding pronouns

I think we should add a section about how to add your preferred pronouns to your signature under "Customizing your signature". Ideally, this would contain examples of user signatures with pronouns to give users ideas on how to do this. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 16:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to write that as a userspace essay supplement to this guideline, since the use of preferred pronouns in signatures is not compelled by policy and not broadly supported. I like the idea, though. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:31, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: I've created User:Qzekrom/Adding your pronouns to your signature. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 03:12, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

as a userspace essay supplement to this guideline I wasn't aware we link to user space from guidelines, if that what was meant. If we do, I'd oppose in this case. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:32, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mandruss: I can move it to project space after I finish a first draft. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 04:17, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Maybe I wasn't clear; I would oppose linking to it in project space from here as well. That would falsely imply wide community acceptance in my view. As far as I know the only wide community acceptance is for singular they. Editors can follow the advice in your essay but it would be inappropriate to endorse it in this guideline. In my opinion. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:26, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Wasn't following the discussion so my response comes pretty late, but here it is anyway. We have many userspace essays expressing an opinion or interpretation of a guideline, sometimes we link to them and sometimes not, it's all fine. That's what I mean by a userspace supplement. For example I have User:Ivanvector/Drafts are cheap and User:Ivanvector/Don't abuse the no personal attacks policy. For a while I had instructions on my user page for adding a Canadian maple leaf emoji to your signature. None of it is linked from project space, and that's fine, they're just my opinions. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:42, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

No thanks. Use {{gender}} if really keen, although it is awkward. We should not encourage messages in signatures as they clutter pages and encourage other editorial commentary that soon becomes irritating. Johnuniq (talk) 04:47, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Malformed markup

Occassionally I have come across signatures which use markup to change fonts etc, and one or more of the changes persist after the end of the signature. It is usually a font change.

In the cases I have seen, it is caused by carelessness rather than naughtiness. It is usually found left on old postings on a user page of a user who is not familiar with markup and was caused by the signature of an editor who is no longer active, or have long since fixed their signature.

Currently the sections "Customizing your signature" and "Dealing with problematic signatures" do not explicitly cover this. I think guidance would be improved if the words covering following two points were to be added to this guideline.

1. That a user must fix such markup errors in their signature if it is pointed out to them and that they must refactor their signature on any page where the error exists.
2. That other editors fixing such mistakes is covered under WP:TALKO#Signature cleanup.

-- PBS (talk) 09:43, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Many of these errors were caused by the recent changes to the wikitext parser from using HTML Tidy to using mw:RemexHtml. Tidy was a lot more foregiving, and would automatically fix most of the unclosed tags, leading users to intentionally leave them unclosed to reduce the length of the markup in their signature. I have been running a bot to catch the more widespread errors, but I'm sure there's a lot more out there. See also Wikipedia:Linter. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:40, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CREEP. This clearly falls under the existing prohibition of disruptive signatures. We don't need to enumerate everything that is clearly disruptive. As for fixing existing errors, we've never required that of the "offender" and I think WP:TALKO#Signature cleanup is sufficient. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:53, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Is Note 2 legitimate?

While it seems self-promoting to me, with what amounts to self-research as the only source, I want to give the benefit of the doubt here. Is there an additional source that backs up this trivia bit? Trumblej1986 (talk) 00:33, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Do you mean the note that reads

Historical note: The four-tilde signature was initially coded by Magnus Manske, one of the original developers of the MediaWiki code, and was intended to resemble scribbled physical signatures like that of his father. See this Twitter exchange for further information.

or are you thinking of something else? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:40, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that is Note 2.Trumblej1986 (talk) 15:15, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Common confusion

Since Help:Signatures redirects here, this page functions as a help page. I see a lot of new editors trying (in various ways) to add a signature to the beginning of their comments. While WP:TILDE does say to post signatures at the end of a comment, I think this might be too easily missed, especially for new editors who already have a lot to process. Having it simply stated in "Nutshell" summary to add signatures "to the end of your comment" (or whatever) might make this issue slightly less common, and slightly easier to explain. This could also be added to the lead paragraph.

I also see a lot of editors, even some experienced ones, adding tildes to their edit summaries. I'm not sure how to address this, but it's a similar issue. Grayfell (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Character/Byte limit

Is there currently a character/byte limit to signatures? I found this Wikipedia talk:Signatures/Archive 1#Imposing signature restrictions discussion from 2006, but the rule for signature size limit doesn't seem to be in the guideline now. My signature is 346 characters or 364 bytes. Is that too big of a size? → [[User:Wei4Green|]] · 唯绿远大 22:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

WP:SIGLEN talks about a 255-character limit and suggests that less than two or three lines in the edit window is desirable. Your signature appears to come from User:Wei4Green/signature. A good test is to edit Talk:The Hill and look at the wikitext. Your signature is too overwhelming there IMHO. Johnuniq (talk) 22:39, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: Thanks. I reduced it to 241 characters. I couldn't find the policy because I was finding the keyword "size" instead of "length" on the page. Should I also replace my previous signatures with my most recent one to avoid violating the policy? [[User:Wei4Green|]] · 唯绿远大 22:54, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

We generally don't do that. I could imagine extreme cases where that might be warranted, but yours isn't one. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:46, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wei4Green: I notice that your current signature is so tall that it increases the white space between lines. If I'm not mistaken that violates WP:SIGAPP bullet 1. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:50, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Is the declaration font-family:微软雅黑; valid? I thought that CSS property values had to use the Latin script. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:46, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Non-ASCII Unicode characters are valid in this context; it comes down to [1] and [2]. I'd guess most people here on the English Wikipedia don't have a font named "微软雅黑" installed, though, unless it's included in all versions of Windows or something like that. Anomie⚔ 16:45, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wei4Green: Possible further reductions:

1. Without the nowiki tags, 224 characters: [[User:Wei4Green|]] · 唯绿远大
2. Without the nowiki tags and the pipe character in the userpage link, 208 characters: [[User:Wei4Green]] · 唯绿远大

But at least fix the height problem I referred to above, and I'm not sure of the best way to do that. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:59, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Removing the inline-block declaration would be the best way to do that, but I guess it would then look pretty cramped with the border. Maybe a thin border and a minimal amount of vertical padding would look okay. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:20, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you guys so much. I took Mandruss's advice and Enterprisey's advice. How do I deal with the padding parameter? I want to, as Mandruss said, reduce the white space above and below. [[User:Wei4Green]] · 唯绿远大 04:33, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wei4Green: I haven't a clue, and you may be in WP:Help desk territory now. We appear to be done talking about signature policy. Whatever you end up with, please do sufficient testing to be certain that the signature does not affect vertical line spacing. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:39, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

WP:SIGLEN

Is WP:SIGLEN a policy or a guideline? Wei4Green · 唯绿远大 04:29, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

It's on a guideline page and lacks {{policy section}}, so I'd say guideline. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:34, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Font size limit

What is the biggest font size that a signature can be? Is 11.7pt OK? I want to increase the font size because my Chinese signature gets sort of distorted when it becomes bold on my talk page.
Example: Wei4Green · 唯绿远大<span style="border-radius:20px;background:#066;padding:0 5px;font-family:微软雅黑;color:#FFF" class=nowrap>[[User:Wei4Green|<span style=color:#9FC>Wei4Green]] · [[User talk:Wei4Green|<span style="color:#FFF;font-size:11.7pt">唯绿远大]]</span> Wei4Green · 唯绿远大 22:53, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wei4Green: The way to avoid the bold is to amend the user talk page link so that it has a fragment, such as <span style="border-radius:20px;background:#066;padding:0 5px;font-family:微软雅黑;color:#FFF" class=nowrap>[[User:Wei4Green|<span style="color:#9FC">Wei4Green</span>]] · [[User talk:Wei4Green#top|<span style="color:#FFF">唯绿远大</span>]]</span> → Wei4Green · 唯绿远大. Please also note that the value of a style= attribute must be quoted, and each HTML opening tag must be balanced by the appropriate closing tag, as in my example. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:50, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Why is that? I wanted to shrink my signature to be as short as possible. Wei4Green · 唯绿远大 16:26, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

In HTML, certain closing tags are optional, but most (including </span>) are mandatory. If you don't balance the tags, then the WP:LINT people will add them in; and if you persist, sooner or later they will complain to you. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:07, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

What Redrose64 says is, of course, correct. However, for the case of signatures the situation can be stated more clearly. If an editor fails to fix their signature after having a problem explained, the editor will be blocked if no other remedy is available. It's one thing to have quirky ideas about formatting article content, but arguing about invalid signatures is just pointless. Johnuniq (talk) 23:13, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Easy there. Why is that? is a question, not an argument, and reflects a desire to understand, not a failure to submit. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:20, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you again Redrose64, Johnuniq, and Mandruss. I will follow Redrose64's suggestion if I switch back to my original design. I'm still learning HTML, so mistakes happen, though I still don't understand the need of quotations and closing tags when the result is what I needed. Wei4Green • #TeamTrees🌳 23:39, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

It's best to follow the documentation, that way everybody should see the same behaviour. Browsers vary in how undocumented features are handled - what works in (say) Firefox might not work in Edge, and vice versa. When the doc for the span element explicitly states Neither tag is omissible you shouldn't go against that: it may behave as you intended when viewed in your browser, but might not in mine. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:17, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Unclosed tags in signatures

Looking at a talk archive, I saw a page that was mostly rendered in small text. It turned out to be the result of a bot run by ShepBot (rendered as §hepBot) from 2009-02-28T04:36:01Z to 07:02:45Z (1200 1075 edits) with this edit summary: Delivering notice re:Coordinators' working group having a missing closing </small> tag: — <small>Delievered by <font color="green">[[User:ShepBot|'''§hepBot''']]</font>''' <small>(<font color="red">[[User talk:ShepBot|Disable]]</font>)'''</small>, or perhaps an extra opening tag, depending on what the intent was (are nested small tags allowed?). I fixed one of them by stripping the two opening and one closing tag

These pages are hard to read as a result. What is the suggested fix? Can these be auto-fixed? Unimportantly, note there is also a spelling error that could be fixed.

Ahecht mentioned above I have been running a bot to catch the more widespread errors .... —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:11, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

A couple of details:

• The contribs list for ShepBot above shows 1075 edits. Search for "Delievered by §hepBot", though, shows 1108 hits (1070 in Wikipedia talk:, 34 in User talk:, 3 in User:, 1 in Wikipedia:).
• The majority of the edits in the contribs list (1047) shows a change of +1,049 bytes. One edit only (to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maldives) shows +1,048 bytes instead, the difference being that it removed an unnecessary newline from the top of the page. The 27 remaining edits, which were performed chronologically first, were +1,047 bytes, the difference being only one blank line below the header instead of the three blank lines in the majority.

—[AlanM1(talk)]— 02:35, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

The WP:LINT people are on this, although it is taking a long time because it is a huge task. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:59, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Proposed changes

1. WP:4TILDES quoteth:

• At the end of your comments simply type four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~.

When newbies (and some experienced editors) follow this advice explicitly, it ends up running the sig right up against the end of the content – especially hard to read when the content has no trailing punctuation. E.g., a comment by Someuser: Blahblahblah foo bar bazSomeuser (talk) 23:12, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to change this to:

• At the end of your comments, simply type a space followed by four tildes (~), like this: end of your comments. ~~~~.

2. I'd also like to add clarification that the signature should be last:

• The signature should be at the very end of your comments, as expected by various automated tools. Do not add anything after the ~~~~.

Comments? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 05:33, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Support the first since the logic is hard to dispute and it has a very small "footprint"; you're just slightly extending an existing sentence for clarification. As for the second, I do sometimes see an editor put something like a list of sources or some proposed text after their signature, and I've sometimes "fixed" that as a routine refactoring action (I believe there should be a signature at the end of every post). Not sure we need a guideline to that effect, however, and I would like to see other arguments. Particularly I would like to hear about what various automated tools are adversely affected by that. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

When I tell someone how to add a signature, I spell it out because people used to email or forums think that a signature should be on a line of its own. I say something like:

• At the end of the last line in your comment, type a space followed by four tildes (~), like this: end of your comment. ~~~~.

I wouldn't bother mentioning automated tools: just say that there should not be any extra text after the four tildes. This is a guideline and people who understand what they are doing might rarely make an exception. Johnuniq (talk) 06:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Useful: Some editors seem to sign their post at the start, not the end. PamD 10:13, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

timestamps

A discussion regarding timestamp creation along with signatures is currently open, anyone interested is invited to join the discussion. Best regards, — xaosflux ^Talk 14:34, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

FYI the just-added language includes Signatures that are customized may be considered disruptive and editors using them may be blocked accordingly. I believe this should probably be clarified as Signatures that are have a customized timestamp may be considered disruptive and editors using them may be blocked accordingly. Pinchme123 (talk) 01:08, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I just changed this to Timestamps that are customized but your version occurred to me as well after I made the edit. The discussion on this change was closed @ ANI before I think a clear consensus had been worked out, and some were opposed to CREEP. In the associated discussion about the problem signature I felt that that particular signature should be prohibited and that I would probably support an outright ban on changing the timestamp in any way but had not considered every possibility for why they might be changed. The section on non-Latin usernames indicates that right-to-left scripts will cause an appearance of Wed ,23:58 (שֵׁם) May 2016 - I don't know where the number of the day is supposed to be or if this is a typo. But if that is the system-generated format I assume bots understand it? —DIYeditor (talk) 07:41, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Bots look at the wikitext, they don't care about the directionality. So the first item in the bytestream needs to be the time as hh:mm followed by a comma, a space, the date as DD Month YYYY, a space and finally the timesone. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:06, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

... finally the timezone in parentheses. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:45, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@DIYeditor: When that example was added, they put the day name ("Wed") instead of the day number. I cleaned it up. Anomie⚔ 15:27, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@DIYeditor: Brevity is nearly always preferable. Thanks for your better update! Cheers. Pinchme123 (talk) 17:47, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

That discussion is closed, less than 24 hours after the invitation. It also was about a single user's behaviour. All in all, I find the invitation misplaced - please do not discuss general changes in a section about individual users. CapnZapp (talk) 21:55, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs) has found this post from almost seven years ago where InedibleHulk (talk · contribs) says that they will "gladly change it back". Apparently not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:03, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

He said there that he would change it back "if any major problem arises". As we've seen, he is the judge of how major the problems are, not the Wikipedia editing community. So that comment is not inconsistent with his more recent ones. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:24, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Aye. Shit finally got real, now here I am, changed back. The system works. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposed solution - if a new discussion page comment has a time in a format that most bots do not recognize, SineBot or another bot will time in a standard format but do it in a way that makes it invisible in web browsers. SineBot already "signs" comments that have a username but no date with {{undated}}. Adding an "invisible" correctly-formatted time will keep the bots happy without making editors feel like someone is "messing with" their signatures. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:00, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Disagree. As long as the talk pages are indented/threaded/ordered by convention I think users must follow the convention. —DIYeditor (talk) 09:35, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Emojis

should we add something about how signatures can't be entirely emojis?--🐦DrWho42 (📼) 05:59, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I assume you mean the non-timestamp part of the signature. I doubt this is necessary. I say this because existing guidelines already discourage distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable signatures, and most "emoji-only" signatures would be confusing either because they didn't uniquely identify the user, or because the emoji itself was not displayed in a unique, non-confusing way on all common web browsers (some browsers and operating systems only support some emojis, it is possible that some "modern" systems don't support them at all). If a particular emoji-only signature whose emojis were not supported by screen-readers or other adaptive technology, for example, that could be considered as "confusing." Now, hypothetically, if your signature consisted of several universally-supported-on-modern-systems-including-screen-readers emojis AND it was clearly identified with your username and was not confusing or guideline-violating in any other way, I'm not sure that we should disallow it merely because it was an emoji-only signature. I would support adding a line to the guideline cautioning people to consider both technical/cross-machine-compatibility issues and issues of outright-confusing use of emojis in their signature. For example "stopsign emoji""running emoji""now emoji"/"talk emoji" for a user whose username that was totally unrelated to the concept of running, speed, or something similar would be confusing, but if the username was StopRunningNow then that would be entirely appropriate provided all 4 emojis were supported on all modern browsers and screen readers on all modern operating systems. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:26, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

@DoctorWho42: That would be a problem for usernames that consist entirely of emojis, unless you are saying that they would require customization, which maybe isn't a bad idea after all. E.g., 😂, who signed: FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ^[u+1F602].

—[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:54, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

😂 and this

Isithandile (talk) 17:57, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Signature advocating a political cause

I think including a political cause in a signature is breaking WP:SOAPBOX part of the Wikipedia guidelines. Therefore, I think we should include a provision to not make signature political and extend WP:SOAPBOX to signatures too or broaden the definition to not include political soapboxing on any part of Wikipedia. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:05, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Template:～～～～

@Redrose64: Concerning this edit, when I save {{subst:～～～～}} in my sandbox, it works as documented. Did you encounter something different? --Bsherr (talk) 17:44, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

But subst: wasn't mentioned. When I use the template as it was directed, this is what happens: Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:25, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

which is a violation of WP:SIG#NT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I created this template after testing in my sandbox, and everything works correctly when it is substituted. CrazyBoy826 18:16, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Also, I created the documentation around 5 mins after the template, so you might have visited the page within that time. I changed the page to show the subst. CrazyBoy826 18:19, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Concerning WP:SIG#NT, this is substituted, so after you save your edit it's exactly the same as using regular four tildes. CrazyBoy826 18:20, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: ping CrazyBoy826 18:21, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Your edit says nothing about subst: and the template, when used as directed in that edit, produces the effect that I demonstrated above. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:24, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I shall now subst it, to demonstrate another problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:25, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

And as you can see, it screws the page layout by adding an undesirable newline, contrary to WP:SIGAPP. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:26, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: see this, everything works correctly after some minor fixes. If anything else happens, just revert the edit on the signature page and put noinclude on the template until it is fixed. CrazyBoy826 18:36, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: To me, or use {{～～～～}} didn't mean literally code it that way, but use it consistent with its documentation, which prescribes substitution (for example, at Wikipedia:Vandalism#Blanking, illegitimate, which uses {{uw-test1}} or {{uw-delete1}} even though they require substitution). But using Template:Tlxs might be an improvement, to the extent that it doesn't require the user to take the extra step of looking at the template. Are you still seeing issues from the template when substituted? I've looked just now but it seems to be working correctly. --Bsherr (talk) 20:14, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Not when substd, the extra newline has now gone. But can we be certain that users will always subst? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: How are we certain that users will always subst the user warnings? Is there a way to add it to the bot substitution list? CrazyBoy826 21:53, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

There are two approaches. The first is to use Template:Require subst, which generates a warning message if the template is not substituted. The second is to identify the template for automatic substitution by bots, by following the instructions at Category:Wikipedia templates to be automatically substituted (it involves adding a template to the template documentation page). --Bsherr (talk) 01:55, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

If bots substitute it, it will produce the bot's signature instead, so I'm using Template:Require subst. CrazyBoy826 21:55, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh, that's true. Good thinking. --Bsherr (talk) 02:38, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

... Pls Read.

So.. If I do, four tidels it sould "sign"? What should It sign and where will it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamuyi (talk • contribs) 18:22, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hamuyi, it will sign your signature. Use ~~~~ which will produce Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC), which I had customized.

No headline

Hamuyi (talk) 18:24, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hamuyi, there you go. But please use WP:SANDBOX next time. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello!

But if I do my signature it'll say "(talk) at the end so i copied this """"Hamuyi (Aye)""" and left that as my signature —Preceding undated comment added 18:45, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Newly discovered signature bug!!

I have discovered a new signature bug. The Rambling Man's signature had four exclamation points in a row, which worked fine except in certain templates. See the The Rambling Man's Resolved comments line in

• Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Old Wykehamists/archive1 before I fixed it
• Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Old Wykehamists/archive1 after I fixed it

My fix was to change two non-consecutive exclamation points (!) to &#33;. The Rambling Man has updated his signature, but I wonder if there are any other signatures out there that have consecutive exclamation points that should be changed, and I wonder if the project page should say something about this odd problem. —Anomalocaris (talk) 10:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: It would fit in section 4.2.1. because it's the same issue. Having said that, how frequent is the problem? (I couldn't find any examples in a search, but that was probably me). ——Serial ^# 10:44, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

It's not a signature bug, and it's not really surprising when you consider that {{collapse top}} makes a table. In a table row, you may put more than one cell on each line; and the second and subsequent cells are each introduced by means of a double pipe (for a normal data cell) or a double exclamation mark (for a header cell). So the markup in question, being placed within a table cell, is merely instructing the parser to terminate that cell and start another. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Redrose64: When I said "signature bug", I didn't mean that the signature-processing software had a bug, I meant I found another example of problematic signature markup, just like unescaped equals or pipes. —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Unclosed tag danger

Warn that unclosed tags can ruin all text beyond your signature. Even that written by other people. For the rest of the page. T255232. Jidanni (talk) 17:54, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Why? Badly-formed HTML is not a problem that is confined to signatures. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:32, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Saving a new signature with an unclosed tag will not be allowed (by the Wikimedia software) starting in a few weeks, according to WMF developers. See this VPT discussion for information and links. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:55, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Putting parts of this guideline in the software

Please see mw:New requirements for user signatures. This is a proposed change to MediaWiki software that would prevent editors from accidentally setting certain types of WP:CUSTOMSIGs (such as a custom signature with no links, or certain types of WP:SIGFORGEs). This would, hopefully, reduce the amount of effort volunteers expend in explaining what's okay and what's not, by producing an error message whenever someone tries to add an invalid signature to their prefs. It's basically a way of putting some of this guideline into the software.

Please share information or examples of (wanted or unwanted) signatures over there. Also, they're not planning to invalidate any existing signatures (this software change would only take effect if you actively tried to change your sig). If you have an opinion on whether they should or shouldn't invalidate old, non-compliant signatures (either now or later), then please tell them that, too. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

If you want to know whether your signature (or any individual user) is okay, please try out User:AntiCompositeNumber's tool at https://tools.wmflabs.org/signatures/ There's also a link to some stats and invalid signatures. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Update

The mw:New requirements for user signatures process starts this Monday, 6 July 2020. At this stage, the only change is: You won't be able to change your sig to an invalid one.

• Wikipedia:Signatures#Treat as wiki markup might need to be updated to say that the software won't let you save the page if you tick this box when you shouldn't be. The most common error is someone putting no wikitext into Special:Preferences, and then ticking the box to say that the non-wikitext should be treated as wikitext.
  • Solution #1: Just untick the box that says "Treat the above as wiki markup".
  • Solution #2: Leave it ticked, and put some wikitext in the custom sig box, so that it has some wikitext to interpret.
• In Wikipedia:Signatures#Guidelines and policies, the software change will take a step towards enforcing the rule that "A customised signature should provide an easily-identified link to your talk page." In practice, will accept a link to your user page, your user talk page, and/or your contributions, but a minimum of one link to your page/talk/contribs at this wiki will be required. (You can have links to other wikis, but there must be one link to your account that points to this wiki.) This will affect maybe 75 accounts (about one in 2,000 active editors).
• In the category of "distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable" signatures, most sigs that cause Special:LintErrors will be invalid. There aren't very many of these – about 150 accounts or one in 1,000 active editors.
• Some things banned by WP:SIGFORGE will be impossible to save in prefs now.

If you want to know whether your own custom sig is okay, then you can check https://signatures.toolforge.org/check To be clear, these rules will come into force if you try to change your sig. If your sig isn't compliant now, then of course you should correct it, but it will keep working for the next few months. Overall, about 99% of active editors will be unaffected.

If you have questions, or if you need help figuring out why the sig you want doesn't work, then please ping me. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Inconsistent link guidelines

In WP:Signatures#Guidelines_and_policies it says "A customised signature should provide an easily-identified link to your talk page. You are encouraged to also provide a link to your user page." In WP:Signatures#Links it says "Signatures must include at least one direct internal link to your user page, user talk page, or contributions page." Which of these is right? Dan Bloch (talk) 06:27, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I assume the "must" supersedes the "should". That is, I interpret the combination as "your signature must link to at least one of your user page/user talk/contribs; if you're going to choose precisely one, it should be your talk page; if two, your user page and user talk page." I feel like the two quotes can be used together without contradictions. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:06, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Danbloch and @Enterprisey: Starting some time on Monday, the requirement for at least one local link is going to be a "must" that's enforced by MediaWiki software for custom sigs, so I'd recommend looking at the #Links language.

By "direct", MediaWiki will be requiring a link to a local user page/talk page/contribs page. A link to your user page at a different Wikipedia won't work. A link from a prior username that redirects to your current username will also not work. (I'm not sure whether a link to w:en:User:Whatamidoing (WMF) [which is a link to my local user page, but via an interwiki/interlanguage link] would be accepted as a "local" link.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:38, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

"[P]opular browsers may drop support for [<font> tags] at some point."

I {{cn}} tagged this statement, found in Wikipedia:Signatures § Font tags, seemingly written when HTML5 was still something new to get excited about and not old hat. Well, now that it's normal, HTML4 is still here, with no plans to ever be dropped.

So, it looked like:

<font>...</font> tags were deprecated in HTML4 and are entirely obsolete in HTML5. This means that the popular browsers may drop support for them at some point.
— revision 968417825

In my WP:ES I wrote:

(→‎Font tags: support will never be dropped as people will always want to read web pages from 90's on wayback machine, and many other old pages. such desire will only grow as more 90's - 00's kids mature and get their required rose tinted glasses prescriptions.)
— revision 968417825

Jonesey95 reverted me, writing:

This is what deprecation literally means. Discuss on talk page.
— revision 968455606

So here I am. @Jonesey95: I did not dispute that <font>...</font> is deprecated, I dispute that any popular browser is ever going to break it. Drop vs deprecate. There's really no policy implication to the line. I'm not saying we ought to start using <font>...</font> everywhere (again), but I think we're spreading false information about the web platform. <font>...</font> is guaranteed to outlive me, and I'd say very likely to still be working in Google Chrome 9000 when Barron Trump is running what remains of the United States. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 14:50, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia serves HTML 5, the spec of which lists font among the non-conforming features, of which it says elements in the following list are entirely obsolete, and must not be used by authors. Whilst browsers may indeed to continue to support HTML 4.01 (or indeed HTML 3.2) for a good while yet, if the browser is served a webpage that is stated to be HTML5 (by using the <!DOCTYPE html> declaration, and not another), it can apply strict HTML5 processing to that webpage, which may mean that the browser ignores the <font>...</font> tags and outputs the enclosed text without any difference from the surrounding content. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:51, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: In that case, I think that the sentence should be edited to This means that the popular browsers may drop support for them when used in HTML5 documents at some point. (new words in bold) for accuracy. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 16:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Psiĥedelisto, you tell an enchanting story, but the HTML5 documentation is clear. Opinions about politics, browser support, and life expectancies are delightful, but a talk page or essay is a more appropriate venue for them than this project page. Thank you for bringing the discussion to this talk page instead of edit-warring; your civility in this matter is like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:32, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Right...the HTML5 documentation is clear...so it's not a problem to make clear that when we say drop support, we mean, in HTML5 documents and not HTML4 documents or all HTML documents, right? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 18:36, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

"Plain fancy sig"

I've sent messages to several hundred editors about a problem with their custom signatures. These are the instructions in the message:

You have a custom signature set in your account preferences. A change to Wikipedia's software has made your current custom signature incompatible with the software.

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: You can reset your signature to the default, or you can fix your signature.

Solution 1: Reset your signature to the default:

1. Find the signature section in the first tab of Special:Preferences.
2. Uncheck the box (☑︎→☐) that says "Treat the above as wiki markup."
3. Remove anything in the Signature: text box. (It might already be empty.)
4. Click the blue "Save" button at the bottom of the page. (The red "Restore all default settings" button will reset all of your preference settings, not just the signature.)

Solution 2: Fix your custom signature:

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

If you have a different problem with your custom signature, and the software won't let you save your changes, then the central documentation page is at mw:New requirements for user signatures/Help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Count me confused. If the sig satisfies the requirement for a link to the UP or UTP, it contains wikitext and I presume it wouldn't work with that box unchecked. If it does not, shouldn't the advice be to make it so? Can't say I've ever really understood the need for that checkbox. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:11, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

If the checkbox is enabled, the signature field is used as-is. If not, it's treated as $1 in a construct like [[User:$1|$1]] ([[User talk:$1|talk]]). Clearly, putting wikimarkup inside the first half of a wikilink is a bad idea. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:24, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Mandruss, the purpose of that field is to let someone type a preferred name (just the name, nothing else) in the custom sig field, and then have that turn up as the label for the userpage, e.g., you type Alice in the field, and your sig says [[User:Example|Alice]] instead of [[User:Example|Example]]. If you want to put something complicated in the field, e.g., your own signature, then you need to tick the checkbox for wikitext. But what seems to happen is that people want the normal, default signature (which uses wikitext, of course), so they put nothing in the field, and then tick the checkbox, because they think that will give them a normal, default signature. Rather than directly mucking about in the prefs database (which is risky work), it's safer to have everyone un-tick the unnecessary bit manually. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): If I read you correctly, Rose's example should have been [[User:Example|$1]] ([[User talk:Example|talk]]). That makes more sense. Dubious value of the added complication/complexity just to save a little one-time coding, but it is what it is. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:57, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

That's probably correct - it's years since I tried to de-select that option. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:13, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Non-Lating usernames

Wikipedia:Signatures#Non-Latin_usernames currently states that "names that cannot be pronounced cannot be retained in memory" which is patently false (see Visual memory). Does anyone wish to object to amending that false statement (by replacing "cannot be retained in memory" with "may prove difficult to remember" or similar, feel free to suggest a better wording)? Should nobody object within the next 14 days, I intend to enact the change. 78.28.55.91 (talk) 19:35, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Are "image emojis" alllowed in signatures?

Is the restriction on images a technical one - not wanting to have [[File:xyz]] as part of the signature - or a usability one, not wanting to have "things that aren't readable characters"?

I would like to add a Christmas-themed emoji, 🎄, but I'm not sure if it counts as an "image" or not. Being a unicode character, it's just as much an image - and no more an image - than any other unicode character, whether it's a letter like A, a punctuation mark like *, or a common "symbolic image" like ♣ or ♭.

Has this come up before? If so, what was the consensus? If not, is it time to start an RFC? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:36, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

It has come up before, have you looked in the archives? See for example Wikipedia talk:Signatures/Archive 12#RfC: Should we disallow emojis in signatures?. In short: emojis made from Unicode characters are not images. In any case, nobody has complained about the 🌹 in mine. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

broken on mobile?

wikimedia has too many issues on mobile...

but perhaps this is a simple one to fix.

using ` 17:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC)` simply doesn't work as advertised:

17:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

no matter how i do it -- 17:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cregox (talk • contribs)

generic signature warning message needs update

It says

1. Add four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment, or
2. With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button  located above the edit window.

but the signature button isn't plainly visible and you have to go into "insert" drop down and look for it. Perhaps that should be updated into the template message. Graywalls (talk) 03:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

The button varies according to both skin and the settings at Preferences → Editing. In some combinations it's absent. See Help:Edit toolbar. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:07, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Length section

Hello. Has anyone been bothered by the Length section's text?

If substitution of templates or another page is used, please be careful to verify that your signature does not violate the 255-character length limit when the templates are expanded, as the software will not do this automatically.

The signature guidelines obviously state templates are not allowed. The section Transclusion of templates (or other pages) says so and so does Guidelines and policies. In my opinion, this text could be removed, but if some are still willing to keep it for means of reference, please do reply with any suggestions or comments. Thanks. Silikonz (💬 | 🖋) 08:52, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Some unusual contributors keep their signature in a user subpage and substitute that. The quoted text is required to tell people that while substitution is permitted, it cannot be used to evade limits. Johnuniq (talk) 09:49, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Ah, OK! Substitution is the key word here. I didn't notice that, how clumsy! Thanks for your response anyway. :) Silikonz (💬 | 🖋) 10:46, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Worth this one-word clarification at "Guidelines and policies" (in my unhumble opinion). ―Mandruss ☎ 10:50, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, is this question about subst:d templates something that you want to consider for the mw:New requirements for user signatures? I know it's checking the templates in other ways now. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:15, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) We could make the software check the 255-character limit after template substitution (other changes from last year made it easy to do), but I didn't suggest that because overly long signatures aren't causing problems for Echo or DiscussionTools, as far as I know. I'd be happy to write a patch though if you want to do it. Matma Rex talk 11:26, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

If anyone has views on this, please comment at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:W6cduvydhcc5ek9h Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Signs and new beginning

I want to publish my article on a novel by milan kundera no one works on it before or any other website or even on wiki as much as i want so i m concerned about references, how to give ?? And what type of references?? Signatures are added where?? Talha Mahmood789 (talk) 19:30, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@Talha Mahmood789: Please read the box at the top of this page. It says:
If you are new to editing Wikipedia, you are probably on the wrong page. Do not ask general questions on this page. Do not talk about articles on this page.
This page is for discussing the Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Signatures. To comment on an article, go back to that article's talk page. To find out how to ask questions and get answers, see Wikipedia:Questions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:00, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

What needs to be linked?

I don't really care what the answer is but this page contradicts itself with in a short distance. Under guidelines and policies (which if we're being technical is its own quagmire of ambiguity) it says A customised signature should provide an easily identified link to your talk page. You are encouraged to also provide a link to your user page. In the section below on syntax it says Your signature must include a link to your user page, talk page or contributions. (emphasis added). Which is it? I'm guessing the Guidelines/policies is correct in which case the syntax guidance should be made clearer. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

MediaWiki now enforces that all signatures MUST include a link to your user page, talk page, or contributions, and that is what the syntax section is referring to (Special:Diff/967743863). WP:CUSTOMSIG/P is older, but says that all signatures SHOULD include a link to a user talk page, and MAY include other links. They're not inherently contradictory, but some rewording might be in order. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Basically, one link is mandatory; but it is up to you which one of the three this is. The other two are both optional. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

It's up to you @Redrose64 except it should be your user talk, or at least that's what it says. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:17, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

There's a local social rule that says there should be a link to your User_talk: page.

There's a (new) technical rule that says there will be at least link to your account (your choice of User:, User_talk:, and/or contribs). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:13, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I made this reversion. There is no reason to water down the instruction that there should be a link to the user talk page with verbage after that implying it's no big deal not to have it. In fact, if it were up to me, we'd outright require such a link. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:34, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. A newish user should follow the should advice to have an easy link to their talk page. Experienced users know that they can wikilawyer such language and be a nuisance, but the advice should not be watered down. Johnuniq (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I just have a quick question of clarification. When mentioned "must have a link", do we mean the label, or the link itself without implying what the label should be? Made up for this example: [[User:Alpha|Beta, Gamma, Delta]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) (link with a different label, custom text optional) or [[User:Alpha|Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) (link with matching label, custom text optional). I don't mean to insinuate using one version over the other, only to clarify what is implied by "link". — Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 16:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)