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The project page says:
<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:
<big>
.)<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.<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.<font-size="3">
:
Anomalocaris (
talk). This does not seem to increase line spacing.<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)
<font-size="3">
examples. --
Ahecht (
TALK@ 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)
<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.<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)The project page says:
<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)
<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.<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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Is one allowed to sign unsigned comments on archived talk pages? Interqwark talk contribs 14:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
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.
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)
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)
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 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.
Simple question. shouldwe disallow text highlighting in signatures? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:56, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with, personallySo 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)
we can request users to changeDisagreed. 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)
Your signature must not blink, scroll, or otherwise cause inconvenience to or annoy other editors.Mz7 ( talk) 19:13, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
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)
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)
Should images in signatures be removed from edits? example — pythoncoder ( talk | contribs) 22:45, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
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">'''<sup>[Why won't you talk with me?]</sup>'''</span>]] ( talk) 19:38, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
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)
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)
~~~~(Unicode characters)
when they edit?
Ivanvector (
Talk/
Edits)
16:30, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
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 💬 theythem 16:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
as a userspace essay supplement to this guidelineI 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)
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.
-- PBS ( talk) 09:43, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Is WP:SIGLEN a policy or a guideline? Wei4Green · 唯绿远大 04:29, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
{{
policy section}}
, so I'd say guideline. ―
Mandruss
☎
04:34, 22 October 2019 (UTC)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)
<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)
</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)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)
span
element explicitly states Neither tag is omissibleyou 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)
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)
1. WP:4TILDES quoteth:
~~~~
.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:
end of your comments. ~~~~
.2. I'd also like to add clarification that the signature should be last:
~~~~
.Comments? —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 05:33, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
various automated toolsare adversely affected by that. ― Mandruss ☎ 05:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
end of your comment. ~~~~
.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
Pinchme123 (
talk)
01:08, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
are have a customized timestamp may be considered disruptive and editors using them may be blocked accordingly.
Timestamps that are customizedbut 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)
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)
should we add something about how signatures can't be entirely emojis?-- 🐦DrWho42 ( 📼) 05:59, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
😂 and this
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)
@
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)
which is a violation of WP:SIG#NT. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 18:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
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)
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 ( talk) 18:24, 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)
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
My fix was to change two non-consecutive exclamation points (!) to !. 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)
{{
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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 {{ 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. citation needed
— 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)
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)
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)
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)
I've sent messages to several hundred editors about a problem with their custom signatures. These are the instructions in the message:
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.
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)
$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)
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)
[[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)
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)
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)
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)
It says
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)
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)
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)
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)
[[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)![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 |
The project page says:
<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:
<big>
.)<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.<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.<font-size="3">
:
Anomalocaris (
talk). This does not seem to increase line spacing.<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)
<font-size="3">
examples. --
Ahecht (
TALK@ 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)
<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.<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)The project page says:
<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)
<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.<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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Is one allowed to sign unsigned comments on archived talk pages? Interqwark talk contribs 14:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
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.
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)
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)
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 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.
Simple question. shouldwe disallow text highlighting in signatures? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:56, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with, personallySo 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)
we can request users to changeDisagreed. 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)
Your signature must not blink, scroll, or otherwise cause inconvenience to or annoy other editors.Mz7 ( talk) 19:13, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
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)
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)
Should images in signatures be removed from edits? example — pythoncoder ( talk | contribs) 22:45, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
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">'''<sup>[Why won't you talk with me?]</sup>'''</span>]] ( talk) 19:38, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
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)
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)
~~~~(Unicode characters)
when they edit?
Ivanvector (
Talk/
Edits)
16:30, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
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 💬 theythem 16:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
as a userspace essay supplement to this guidelineI 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)
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.
-- PBS ( talk) 09:43, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Is WP:SIGLEN a policy or a guideline? Wei4Green · 唯绿远大 04:29, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
{{
policy section}}
, so I'd say guideline. ―
Mandruss
☎
04:34, 22 October 2019 (UTC)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)
<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)
</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)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)
span
element explicitly states Neither tag is omissibleyou 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)
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)
1. WP:4TILDES quoteth:
~~~~
.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:
end of your comments. ~~~~
.2. I'd also like to add clarification that the signature should be last:
~~~~
.Comments? —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 05:33, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
various automated toolsare adversely affected by that. ― Mandruss ☎ 05:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
end of your comment. ~~~~
.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
Pinchme123 (
talk)
01:08, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
are have a customized timestamp may be considered disruptive and editors using them may be blocked accordingly.
Timestamps that are customizedbut 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)
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)
should we add something about how signatures can't be entirely emojis?-- 🐦DrWho42 ( 📼) 05:59, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
😂 and this
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)
@
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)
which is a violation of WP:SIG#NT. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 18:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
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)
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 ( talk) 18:24, 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)
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
My fix was to change two non-consecutive exclamation points (!) to !. 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)
{{
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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 {{ 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. citation needed
— 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)
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)
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)
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)
I've sent messages to several hundred editors about a problem with their custom signatures. These are the instructions in the message:
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.
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)
$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)
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)
[[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)
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)
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)
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)
It says
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)
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)
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)
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)
[[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)