UDWiki talk:Administration/Policy Discussion/Sig policy update

Reason

Added a piece about the reason we have sigs on a wiki;
The primary reason for signatures on this wiki is so that other users can easily identify who has made a post on talk pages without having to go to the trouble of sifting through page histories. A secondary consideration is that they bring some personalised flair to the wiki, and give people a way to promote their projects and group allegiances that is easily accessible. -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 23:35 14 February 2009 (BST)

Required Link

Added a definition of handle portion:
"The handle portion of your signature" refers to the first few words of your signature (and any image or characters that may be placed before it), which should stand out from any tailing end to the sig. Basically, the obvious part of your sig should be the part that links to your user page, given that the user page link is the primary reason for the signature. -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 23:35 14 February 2009 (BST)

What wouldn't be allowed

Added;

• Links to user pages (or sub pages) other than your own in the handle part of a signature.
• Multiple uses of the <small> tag on the handle part of a signature.

-- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 23:35 14 February 2009 (BST)

The first one makes sense the second doesn't. Sigs that break pages are already open to alteration.--Karek^maps?! 03:24, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Blinking text.

Sigs longer than 45 characters including spaces. (displayed below)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 45

It might even be better to lower it to 40 if this is about not letting sigs wrap around too much.--– Nubis ^NWO 15:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to forbid blinking, you should forbid all blinking stuff (like blinking GIFs), not just text. --Midianian^{¦T¦DS¦SP¦} 15:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree! I think all blinking - text or gifs - should be prohibited. They are just too distracting!--Lois ^{talk 10MFH} 18:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The Help:Templated_Signatures page shows blinking text is on the "things to not do" list; I have no idea is that's official policy, though. Personally, I don't care so much, but if you're going to go that route, I agree with Midianian: you should prohibit blinking and animated icons and GIFs as well as text. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 06:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that the GIFs and blinking text are annoying. Personally, I do think if you ban one you must ban them both. --OctaneHugo 23:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

There's a way to disable blinking text in Firefox, although it's beyond me now (involves fiddling around with the backend, however.) Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing blinking text/gifs gone. Like the 45 character limit too. Linkthewindow  Talk  05:09, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes - blinking text can be disabled in Firefox, but this doesn't really solve the problem. What about users on a public computer or on a computer where they don't have the authority to change this? --Lois ^{talk 10MFH} 11:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Public computers probably use IE, which thankfully doesn't support this piece of code (Yay, standards compliance). The designer of said code, by the way, has called it "The worst thing I ever did for the internet". Also, I'm not in for the banning of gifs. First not all gifs are animated, second, not all animated gifs are bad. It's adding a subjective point, I know, but I think only those animated gifs set out to be 'annoying' with blinking effects or whatever need the banhammer. --  RoosterDragon  12:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we were considering banning gifs, in general... only the blinking ones.--Lois ^{talk 10MFH} 13:43, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Then just make sure the wording is clear if this bit gets added, to prevent further confusion. --  RoosterDragon  13:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

What would be allowed

Allowing anything not specifically disallowed opens the policy right up to people "gaming the system" for drama -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 23:35 14 February 2009 (BST)

Agreed. This section should probably be eliminated entirely and be assumed since if something isn't disallowed, then well... it's allowed. Just seems redundant. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 18:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I also agree. Better to just remove this section than to say "everything else is allowed." ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 06:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Punishment

Whole section removed for rework.

Giving a week to fix a signature, to someone who has a high post rate is ridiculous. For example, if SA had been given a week to change his preferences so that he wasn't using a signature that linked equally to both his own and Nubis' user page, there would be hundreds of instances where it would have been included, and given that it wasn't a templated signature, it would be a ridiculous amount of work to change them all back later.
I believe that it should be a few days, or (say) 15 edits (whichever comes first) before they have to meaningfully address such a clear violation of the policy -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 23:35 14 February 2009 (BST)

What about something along the lines of "User will have a period of 1 week to change their signature to comply with these guidelines, afterwhich the whole section will be removed for rework."
I understand the concern for users who have edits all over the wiki, so it would be kind of unreasonable to go through and manually edit all of those. As pages are edited and re-edited (or massacred/archived) the wiki should naturally clear those sigs out, should it not? --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 18:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

What about giving them a week or so many edits (15?), whichever comes first? That would solve the problem of the frequent Wiki poster without penalizing those who don't frequent the Wiki as often. --Lois ^{talk 10MFH} 11:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

Your additions and alterations lead to inconsistancies, and therefore loopholes, within the policy. Would you like me to rewrite it with this in mind?

The Rooster was speaking about the line breaking nature of superscript that is common in many signatures and suggested that the image height be adjusted accordingly to 17px. Do you think we should include this alteration in the new policy?

High traffic pages such as Talk:Suggestions can sometimes suffer from template breakage due to a critical amount of template calls on a page, should we include in this proposal a moratorium on template calls within templated signatures?

The procedure and punishment section requires severe stipulations given the recent Hagnat situation. Would you care for me to draft this section as well? -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 00:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

1. The small tag thing needs to be re-worded. It looks like you mean "you shouldn't make the handle part too small", so why not say that directly? It's possible to make it small through other means. Actually, I think it should simply say something like "the handle part must be clearly visible and easily identifiable". Making it small isn't the only way of obscuring it. Consider this signature. Not sure how it looks on your monitors, but it's pretty well camouflaged on mine.
2. I think the (code) size of the signature should be limited (a thousand characters should be more than enough). Also, I agree with Iscariot that template calls within a signature should be forbidden.
3. I think it would be better to change the format from a list of things that are not allowed into a list of requirements (such as "handle part must be visible and identifiable"). There's little point in trying to forbid every way of making the handle part obscured, especially if everything that isn't under "not allowed" is allowed. It's just asking for people to find loopholes. But that'd mean scrapping most of the old policy.
4. Oh, and duplicate links should be forbidden. --Midianian^{¦T¦DS¦SP¦} 05:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks alright, although it's a tad reactionary (not saying that's a bad thing.) I'm with Mid on the small tag thing. It's not the only way to hide the username. Probably just have something along the lines of Signatures must have a clear and concise link to the userpage or one of it's subpages.

Don't have a problem with banning template calls within sigs. Especially with pages like Developing Suggestions, pretty much any big policy discussion page, sigs may be included a heap. We don't need the extra load of more templates.

Again, Mid has a point. We are probably better off mixing both ideas, stuff that should not be allowed (pretty much whats already there,) and stuff that must be in a sig. I can't think of anything now beyond the obvious.

Don't really care about how long the code should be. Sigs like AHLG's have a heck of a lot of code, and should be discouraged in a non-templated form, otherwise meh. People could hypothetically cause massive slowdown if they had sigs with lots of code, but it's not likely.

The punishments thing is needed, although it's reactionary. If I changed my sig to something pointless and spammy, that could break half the wiki (since it's included on 1k+pages now.) Having an edit number+time is much better then the current system.

-- Linkthewindow  Talk  09:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Large templated signatures reduce the amount of stuff that can be included from other templates. A large portion of signatures stay around 250, most under 500. A thousand characters would be quite generous.

Actually, there definitely needs to be a limit on the size of the included page. While looking at signatures, I came across hagnat's sig page. The signature itself isn't big, but the page has a shitload of (<noinclude>'d) stuff on it. Did some testing; hagnat's sig could be included on a page less than a hundred times. For comparison, my old templated signature could be included around 1600 times. --Midianian^{¦T¦DS¦SP¦} 16:46, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we should kill Hagnat for crimes against the server. Anyway to respond to this and several other bits:

1. No template calls within signatures (subst if necessary)
2. Any non-included code should be kept to a minimum, or transcluded if it's long (transcluding in noincludes is fine).
3. Sigs with excessive code (over 500 chars included) should have their redundant code streamlined where possible, or remade entirely.
4. Reword that handle bit as above, "the handle portion must be clearly visible and easily identifiable" or similar.
5. Don't change the image bit to 17px, that needs a 1px div offset to align correctly. Too much hassle. 15/16 might be fine, but I can't be bothered to see if they would need a div.
6. Although IE doesn't support this particular piece of retarded code, I'm all for banning <blink> along with animated gifs that are intended to cause similar effects. Though not all animated gifs.
7. Punishments. Any templated sig change that that clearly breaks the wiki is vandalism of the hundreds of pages the sig is likely to be included on, and should be treated as such. The best way to vandalise stuff has always been through editing templates, and templated sigs simply provide a way for a malicious user to get the template onto the pages they want without anybody raising an eyebrow. If they want to abuse their sig as a mass vandalism tool, boot them off.

--  RoosterDragon  13:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

fuck you.

--xoxo 07:34, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Gold. --Cyberbob 08:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

In the basket. Conndraka^{mod TAZM CFT} 21:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I prefer hamters, actually. --Cyberbob 22:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

mmmm, sorry all out of hamters. If you don't want gold you have the choice between cake, and mudkipz. Conndraka^{mod TAZM CFT} 03:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

GTFOFU my angry header.--xoxo 08:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

no u-- Adward  13:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww --Cyberbob 13:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

handle portion?

What exactly does it mean to "stand out from any tailing end to the sig"? Will my sig not be allowed because the d doesn't stand out enough? Or because it isn't the "first few words"? --dgw 12:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Still going

I'm still interested in getting this to voting, just been busy IRL.

I'm not that keen to get into the area of banning flashing or gif images (that's better done as a specific, minor modification of the existing sig policy).

Templated sigs... I agree that they cause problems, but perhaps they should be treated separate to this policy (if you put too much into one policy, nearly everyone can find a reason to vote against). One question, why ban template calls within templates, if you are just subst'ing them in anyway? Surely you just end up with the same sized inclusion.

Image size. I wouldn't have anything against upping the image size to 17px... but they would have to be on the same alignment as the text. Some seem to be bumped upwards (perhaps with the <sup> tags?), forcing them into the above line of text -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 13:29 4 March 2009 (BST)

• Making a template call within a templated sig = Expensive to call = Not allowed.
• Substing a template call within a templated sig = Not a template call = Just fine.

People put images into superscript and subscript? Strange. That'd come under general wiki-breakage if it caused problems anyway. --  RoosterDragon  19:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Created on the 14th February. More than 14 days later it still hasn't entered voting. And I quote:

"Any discussion which doesn't go to voting in 2 weeks will be archived."

A sysop having his own personal agenda circumvent the rules... again... -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 03:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Sheds a tear for the injustice of it all -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 08:00 5 March 2009 (BST)

Lays out a platter with Cheddar, Gouda, Provolone, Brie, Gorgonzola, Havarti, and Jarlsberg. Conndraka^{mod TAZM CFT} 15:44, 5 March 2009 (UTC)