Wikipedia talk:Signatures/Archive 3

message: ====For====
#Free expression
#Fun to make
#Self-identification
#Make us feel human (hence become more productive)
#Spotting one's comment in lengthy debates
#Spotting double votes
#Speeding up access to Talk or contributions pages
#Can confuse vandals
#Gives us the capacity to link to user subpages and alt accounts
#Increase creativity
#Gives people with little to contribute to the encyclopedia something to do
#Alows users to use a nice name (real name/nick name) instead of User_23b etc
*(add yours)
====Against====
#Long code in edit window, unreadable content
#Undue prominence to a given user's contribution
#Distracting from the actual message
#Can cause edit box to show an horizontal scrollbar
#Can confuse bots
#Confusing and annoying when person's username is different from the name on their sig
#Adds to 'Myspacification' problem. Userpages exist to provide ample area for personalisation and self-expression
#Encourages bad typographical habits (highlighted/colored words for no reason), which thereby spread to Wikiprojects and Portals and everywhere
#Way too many ugly garish signatures
#Often unreadable even to editors with no visual impairment.
*(add yours)
----
I have an answer to all arguments in 'Against':
#Hit <enter> in-between comments and encourage short sigs (e.g. mine: --NS) in long bulletted lists (like e.g. here).
#Hah, I actually think it has come to be the opposite!
#Never happened to me, helps me spot them.
#Never seen that due to a sig (or anything for that matter) in both ie6 and FireFox.
Can I please have some comments from those contesting the arguments in 'For'? Are there any more arguments? NikoSilver 17:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added one reason to each column. --ais523 11:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My comments on some of the for arguments: 1 and 2 are irrelevant, Wikipedia is not a tool for self expression or a entertainment site, I fail to see how adding tonnes of formating to your signature will make you more productive. If you have trouble finding your comments hit F3 (or Ctrl + F or whatever) and search for your name. If anyting custum sigs make it harder to spot double votes as people can just change it and sign again. How exactly does custum sigs confuse vandals? If your sig is misleading it will confuse everyone else too, and why do you need to link to all your subpages every time you sign a page, that's just spamming. --Sherool (talk) 18:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Argumentation on formatted signatures

message: #Long code in edit window, unreadable content
#Undue prominence to a given user's contribution
#Distracting from the actual message
#Can cause edit box to show an horizontal scrollbar
#Can confuse bots
#Confusing and annoying when person's username is different from the name on their sig
#Adds to 'Myspacification' problem. Userpages exist to provide ample area for personalisation and self-expression
#Encourages bad typographical habits (highlighted/colored words for no reason), which thereby spread to Wikiprojects and Portals and everywhere
#Way too many ugly garish signatures
#Often unreadable even to editors with no visual impairment.
*(add yours)
----
I have an answer to all arguments in 'Against':
#Hit <enter> in-between comments and encourage short sigs (e.g. mine: --NS) in long bulletted lists (like e.g. here).
#Hah, I actually think it has come to be the opposite!
#Never happened to me, helps me spot them.
#Never seen that due to a sig (or anything for that matter) in both ie6 and FireFox.
Can I please have some comments from those contesting the arguments in 'For'? Are there any more arguments? NikoSilver 17:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added one reason to each column. --ais523 11:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My comments on some of the for arguments: 1 and 2 are irrelevant, Wikipedia is not a tool for self expression or a entertainment site, I fail to see how adding tonnes of formating to your signature will make you more productive. If you have trouble finding your comments hit F3 (or Ctrl + F or whatever) and search for your name. If anyting custum sigs make it harder to spot double votes as people can just change it and sign again. How exactly does custum sigs confuse vandals? If your sig is misleading it will confuse everyone else too, and why do you need to link to all your subpages every time you sign a page, that's just spamming. --Sherool (talk) 18:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Against

message: ::And for Number 6... Why should we care about Bots?
E9  TALK |	E9  TALK |	ROCKER!!	ROCKER!!	ROCKAB00M  TALK	ROCKAB00M  TALK
 
-- Though I am getting very scared looking at mine... How did I make all that?
There is a solution to all that though: They could leave  in. Then mine would say  instead of all that virtually uneditable stuff.
Despite the fact that my signature is on this page, I will proceed to add three tildes on the next line:
~~~
E9  TALK |	E9  TALK |	ROCKER!!	ROCKER!!	ROCKAB00M  TALK	ROCKAB00M  TALK
 
===Reducing signature length===
See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Reduce the size limit for sigs? for the most recent raising of this issue, and vote for Bug 8458 if you have a bugzilla account. —Quiddity 22:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: E9

message: See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Reduce the size limit for sigs? for the most recent raising of this issue, and vote for Bug 8458 if you have a bugzilla account. —Quiddity 22:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reducing signature length

message: See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Reduce the size limit for sigs?] for the most recent raising of this issue, and vote for Bug 8458 if you have a bugzilla account. —Quiddity 22:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reducing signature length 

message: where the signature is defined in preferences?Lakinekaki 10:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just under your email address, two boxes below your internal user ID number. --ais523 18:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As for the question in the section heading, because the software can't figure out what needs signing and what doesn't (for instance, I've added two lines here in one edit, and it would be quite hard for the software to figure out where to sign this comment!). --ais523 18:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the answer! Lakinekaki 17:27, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Somebody named Hagerman (????) has figured out how to make it automatic - I neglected to type my four tildas and found this following my post:
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fourtildas (talk • contribs) 05:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, there's a new bot that's looking for unsigned comments (see User:HagermanBot for details). It errs towards not signing if it isn't sure, so it's still a good idea to sign normally. --ais523 08:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, if users wish to opt out of this bot's attentions, they can do so at User:HagermanBot/OptOut. -- nae'blis 00:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Since signing posts is a guideline, why not make it automatic with submit button 

message: What happens to users that use an image in their signature? While this occurence is rare, I have seen a few users who are either unaware or ignore this policy. Is there some recourse for those who keep the image if advised of the policy and choose to ignore it? Lima Golf 17:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image use 

message: Removed this sentence: "the game rapper name was changed to gayme fix it guys dont know where to write it". That page has already been reverted and semi-protected and the help request doesn't belong here anyway. Tekkaman 11:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help request removed 

message: I think the title of this guideline is a problem.  For example, it's not obvious that this guideline would discuss customizing one's signature.  Renaming it to Wikipedia:Signatures would be easier to remember, fit better with its shortcut, WP:SIG, and match its content, present and future, better.  Thoughts?  -- John Broughton   ☎☎ 04:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed and done. --Ligulem 10:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  -- John Broughton   (☎☎) 17:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed rename 

message: Here's the problematic text:
Signatures with non-latin script should also include latin script.
If your preferred signature consists of characters not in the latin alphabet (hànzì, for example), you should include latin characters also. This is because characters not within the ASCII character set may not display properly for everyone.  This is a particular problem for people who use screen readers.  This also makes it easier to search for your user name using the search function.
First I thought I could simply fix this, but there are many problems:
====Argument based on text as written====
The reason given wrt ASCII is incorrect. ASCII is a subset of the latin alphabet. The latin alphabet is more properly represented by a (subset of) the ISO 8859 character sets, if you really want to know.
The actual current standard for character encoding is UTF-8, which is supported by all current browsers and internet software, including (not surprisingly therefore) mediawiki. 
If your system cannot correctly display UTF-8, it might be severely out of date, but this is unlikely, and is becoming increasingly unlikely with each passing year . It is more likely that the system is misconfigured, incompletely configured, or somehow broken. You will find that many websites will fail to display correctly on your system, not just wikipedia.
I do not believe that screen readers constitute a problem, and mentioning them here is a red herring.
This text is therefore confusing, wrong, and doesn't actually tell us much about the reasons currently being brought forth by the community.
;Compromise?
Sure:
Based on this argument, we could perhaps politely request people to include a number of characters from the basic 7-bit ascii set, out of deference and politeness to people who haven't quite gotten their systems fixed yet might be ok. But this should be seen as a gesture of politeness on the side of people with working systems. In the long term, people who have failing systems should naturally see to it that their systems are fixed as soon as possible.
==== Argument based on current local and cross community discussions ====
I think some people local to en.wikipedia can't quite read every single script on the planet. I guess that's probably true for everyone. However, this does not mean we can go around blocking people from other wikis, just because of our own ignorance, of course.
;Compromise?
I think politely asking people to also include some latin alphabet characters in their signatures is a good compromise for now. I would stop short of making it a requirement, however. Making it a requirement would start the entire wikimedia circus again, which is something I think we all want to avoid.
Possibly we can stick to just the arguments from local discussions, and formulate a better text. Anyone willing to give it a shot? 
--Kim Bruning 16:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arguments so far

message: I think some people local to en.wikipedia can't quite read every single script on the planet. I guess that's probably true for everyone. However, this does not mean we can go around blocking people from other wikis, just because of our own ignorance, of course.
;Compromise?
I think politely asking people to also include some latin alphabet characters in their signatures is a good compromise for now. I would stop short of making it a requirement, however. Making it a requirement would start the entire wikimedia circus again, which is something I think we all want to avoid.
Possibly we can stick to just the arguments from local discussions, and formulate a better text. Anyone willing to give it a shot? 
--Kim Bruning 16:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Argument based on current local and cross community discussions 

message: I agree too —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jinx-fox (talk • contribs) 01:14, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  is this kinda creepy  

message: There was some discussion earlier about adding some sort of wording about having a link in one's sig (to one's own user: or user_talk: page), but there doesn't seem to have been any follow-up action on this.  Any objections to adding such a proviso now?  Alai 03:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The cases I've seen have been due to people messing up their preferences settings, rather than deliberately avoiding a link, but this wouldn't strike me as being an unreasonable requirement. --ais523 09:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure that's indeed correct, in the majority of cases.  I suggest making it explicit to a) provide an indication of the community norm and a "how-to" for the mildly befuddled, b) discourage those who are (possibly, one might be given to suspect...) using it as a means of discouraging talk-page communication, and c) to avoid the possibility of someone, whether through accident or design, both using a sig with non-standard form of their user name (or bearing no relation at all to their user id, indeed), and with no link, which would be a recipe for untold consternation.  (I've not yet seen any instances of the third, but I can imagine it's only a matter of time, absent any clear injunction against either separately.)  Alai 13:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underwrought signatures?  (i.e., Linkless) 

message: I want my sig to be this: J-stan Talk. However, whenever I put it in my preferences, I get a message saying to check my HTML tags. This is what comes out: stan Talk 02:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem