| This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Signatures page. |
|
 | If you are new to editing Wikipedia, you might be on the wrong page. This page is not meant for general questions or discussions about articles. This page is specifically for discussions about the Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Signatures. To discuss an article, please use that article's talk page instead. For help with using and editing Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Teahouse. |
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This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
A training tool within the framework of Wikipedia:Education creates discussions on Talk pages on behalf of student editors, and publishes a comment on the TP with a sig that is not the userid of the editor running the tool. There is a question as to whether this is compliant with the guideline, in particular, the policy section at § Signature forgery. Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 23:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § RfC: applying signature validation retroactively.
Frostly (
talk) 04:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)—
Frostly (
talk) 04:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
...is at User:HouseBlaster/sandbox. Comments welcome. House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 22:16, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
- I adapted a message that a few of us have been using for three years or so. It has worked well; I have had a number of comments thanking me for the detailed instructions or saying that they worked. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 22:44, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you! The new version suggests that a replacement signature is provided, but that is not the case. If someone wants to go through and do that for all 300+ people on
the list, be my guest. Otherwise, I think it be changed to say (in kind language) "either figure out how to fix your signature on your own or ask for help".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 22:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
- I've gone ahead and
Done the above. @
Jonesey95: does it look alright to you?
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 00:58, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Good catch. The message looks great now. I used to provide fixed custom signatures for each editor when I delivered this message. See
this talk page for an example. We're not going to do that with this message. How was the list of editor recipients created? I'm curious about the criteria. Also, does the "Learn more" button appear automatically for editors who have an invalid signature, even before they click Save? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 01:49, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list was created at
phab:T356168 (with a massive thank you to
Matma Rex!). The button appears automatically.
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 01:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. I poked around that task and some of its links, but I was unable to find a set of criteria that were easy for me to parse. I did a bit of spot-checking, and I didn't see any errors. I was expecting there to be a lot more than 300 active editors with font or tt tags in their sigs. We'll see. We may need to repeat this process once every month or two for a while; infrequent talk-page posters appear on and disappear from the toolforge signature report. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 02:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list comes directly from MediaWiki; if they are not on that list they either have not edited a discussion in the past three months or they do not have an invalid signature. I know some people create a template and use that instead the standard ~~~~; their signatures are not technically "invalid".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 02:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- @ Jonesey95: if there are no further objections, would you be able to send out the message to everyone at User:HouseBlaster/invalid signatures? House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 23:25, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list comes directly from MediaWiki; if they are not on that list they either have not edited a discussion in the past three months or they do not have an invalid signature. I know some people create a template and use that instead the standard ~~~~; their signatures are not technically "invalid".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 02:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. I poked around that task and some of its links, but I was unable to find a set of criteria that were easy for me to parse. I did a bit of spot-checking, and I didn't see any errors. I was expecting there to be a lot more than 300 active editors with font or tt tags in their sigs. We'll see. We may need to repeat this process once every month or two for a while; infrequent talk-page posters appear on and disappear from the toolforge signature report. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 02:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list was created at
phab:T356168 (with a massive thank you to
Matma Rex!). The button appears automatically.
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 01:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Good catch. The message looks great now. I used to provide fixed custom signatures for each editor when I delivered this message. See
this talk page for an example. We're not going to do that with this message. How was the list of editor recipients created? I'm curious about the criteria. Also, does the "Learn more" button appear automatically for editors who have an invalid signature, even before they click Save? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 01:49, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- I've gone ahead and
- Thank you! The new version suggests that a replacement signature is provided, but that is not the case. If someone wants to go through and do that for all 300+ people on
the list, be my guest. Otherwise, I think it be changed to say (in kind language) "either figure out how to fix your signature on your own or ask for help".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 22:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
@ Jonesey95: it shouldn't need to be resent, because in a month all of those editors with invalid signatures will no longer have invalid signatures. House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 02:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I fixed my signature months ago. --ZacBowling ( user| talk) 04:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
- ZacBowling, unsurprisingly, bots are imperfect. Express your concerns to the bot operator. Cullen328 ( talk) 04:52, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
At present there are two policies on this page addressing the same thing:
- A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username.
- It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents.
There was a RfC in 2021 which closed with the consensus against signatures being required to correspond exactly to usernames and no consensus to require that signatures be easily recognizable to a new user as referring to the username they link to.
The two conclusions from the RFC were:
- "There is significant opposition to the point where it is clear there is a consensus that signatures are not required to display someone's username in its entirety, without changes."
- "There is therefore no requirement that signatures be easily recognizable to a new user as referring to the username they link to."
It seems only the second guideline (above) adheres to this consensus, so the obvious solution is to remove the first one. However when I tried to do this it was undone by another editor. So I'm bringing the discussion here. Thanks. WikiMane (TP2001) ( talk) 14:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
-
ThunderPeel2001, why did you
reimplement your disputed edit before getting any responses to this question? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 21:02, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
- Because I'm a naughty Wikipedian :-P Note that actually it wasn't the same edit, I moved the second point to more prominence because I reached out to the editor who undid my edit on their talk page... and they refused to discuss their edit, which led me to think they hadn't even read the whole list before undoing the original change I made. WikiMane (TP2001) ( talk) 10:04, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- I note the second conclusion also states
I would add that the existing advice on the subject could be worded more strongly regardless of it not being a hard requirement
. I don't think we need both of the bullets, but it would be reasonable for someone to support stronger language in the merged version. Anomie ⚔ 11:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)- Do you have a proposal? It seems hard to find wording that is both strongly suggestive to new users but also won't be used as a cudgel by other well-meaning editors.
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 10:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Maybe "A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username, but this is not required."? 🤷
Anomie
⚔ 11:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think that works. Do we keep the second point, too?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 16:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- I'd have just one bullet point, with the footnote from the second existing bullet included.
Anomie
⚔ 21:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed. Although just thinking about this with fresh eyes, what's wrong with: "It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents, but it is not required."? Do you think it's too soft?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 21:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- That is too soft. One reason people opposed requiring signatures to match user names is that a significant number of excellent editors started years ago with a user name that no longer appeals and they have signatures that don't draw attention to it. This guideline/policy is mainly for the future and newer editors should be encouraged to have comprehensible signatures. The fact that the policy does not say "a signature must match the user name" is sufficient leeway for cases like yours. You have "TP2001" in the signature and that's fine.
Johnuniq (
talk) 02:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, updated with @ Anomie's suggestion. Thanks! WikiMane (TP2001) ( talk) 20:59, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- That is too soft. One reason people opposed requiring signatures to match user names is that a significant number of excellent editors started years ago with a user name that no longer appeals and they have signatures that don't draw attention to it. This guideline/policy is mainly for the future and newer editors should be encouraged to have comprehensible signatures. The fact that the policy does not say "a signature must match the user name" is sufficient leeway for cases like yours. You have "TP2001" in the signature and that's fine.
Johnuniq (
talk) 02:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed. Although just thinking about this with fresh eyes, what's wrong with: "It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents, but it is not required."? Do you think it's too soft?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 21:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- I'd have just one bullet point, with the footnote from the second existing bullet included.
Anomie
⚔ 21:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think that works. Do we keep the second point, too?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 16:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Maybe "A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username, but this is not required."? 🤷
Anomie
⚔ 11:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Do you have a proposal? It seems hard to find wording that is both strongly suggestive to new users but also won't be used as a cudgel by other well-meaning editors.
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 10:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
| This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Signatures page. |
|
|
| If you are new to editing Wikipedia, you might be on the wrong page. This page is not meant for general questions or discussions about articles. This page is specifically for discussions about the Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Signatures. To discuss an article, please use that article's talk page instead. For help with using and editing Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Teahouse. |
|
| Wikipedia Help NA‑class High‑importance | |||||||||
| ||||||||||
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
A training tool within the framework of Wikipedia:Education creates discussions on Talk pages on behalf of student editors, and publishes a comment on the TP with a sig that is not the userid of the editor running the tool. There is a question as to whether this is compliant with the guideline, in particular, the policy section at § Signature forgery. Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 23:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § RfC: applying signature validation retroactively.
Frostly (
talk) 04:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)—
Frostly (
talk) 04:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
...is at User:HouseBlaster/sandbox. Comments welcome. House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 22:16, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
- I adapted a message that a few of us have been using for three years or so. It has worked well; I have had a number of comments thanking me for the detailed instructions or saying that they worked. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 22:44, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you! The new version suggests that a replacement signature is provided, but that is not the case. If someone wants to go through and do that for all 300+ people on
the list, be my guest. Otherwise, I think it be changed to say (in kind language) "either figure out how to fix your signature on your own or ask for help".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 22:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
- I've gone ahead and Done the above. @
Jonesey95: does it look alright to you?
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 00:58, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Good catch. The message looks great now. I used to provide fixed custom signatures for each editor when I delivered this message. See
this talk page for an example. We're not going to do that with this message. How was the list of editor recipients created? I'm curious about the criteria. Also, does the "Learn more" button appear automatically for editors who have an invalid signature, even before they click Save? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 01:49, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list was created at
phab:T356168 (with a massive thank you to
Matma Rex!). The button appears automatically.
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 01:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. I poked around that task and some of its links, but I was unable to find a set of criteria that were easy for me to parse. I did a bit of spot-checking, and I didn't see any errors. I was expecting there to be a lot more than 300 active editors with font or tt tags in their sigs. We'll see. We may need to repeat this process once every month or two for a while; infrequent talk-page posters appear on and disappear from the toolforge signature report. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 02:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list comes directly from MediaWiki; if they are not on that list they either have not edited a discussion in the past three months or they do not have an invalid signature. I know some people create a template and use that instead the standard ~~~~; their signatures are not technically "invalid".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 02:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- @ Jonesey95: if there are no further objections, would you be able to send out the message to everyone at User:HouseBlaster/invalid signatures? House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 23:25, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list comes directly from MediaWiki; if they are not on that list they either have not edited a discussion in the past three months or they do not have an invalid signature. I know some people create a template and use that instead the standard ~~~~; their signatures are not technically "invalid".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 02:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. I poked around that task and some of its links, but I was unable to find a set of criteria that were easy for me to parse. I did a bit of spot-checking, and I didn't see any errors. I was expecting there to be a lot more than 300 active editors with font or tt tags in their sigs. We'll see. We may need to repeat this process once every month or two for a while; infrequent talk-page posters appear on and disappear from the toolforge signature report. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 02:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- The list was created at
phab:T356168 (with a massive thank you to
Matma Rex!). The button appears automatically.
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 01:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Good catch. The message looks great now. I used to provide fixed custom signatures for each editor when I delivered this message. See
this talk page for an example. We're not going to do that with this message. How was the list of editor recipients created? I'm curious about the criteria. Also, does the "Learn more" button appear automatically for editors who have an invalid signature, even before they click Save? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 01:49, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- I've gone ahead and
- Thank you! The new version suggests that a replacement signature is provided, but that is not the case. If someone wants to go through and do that for all 300+ people on
the list, be my guest. Otherwise, I think it be changed to say (in kind language) "either figure out how to fix your signature on your own or ask for help".
House
Blaster (
talk · he/him) 22:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
@ Jonesey95: it shouldn't need to be resent, because in a month all of those editors with invalid signatures will no longer have invalid signatures. House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 02:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I fixed my signature months ago. --ZacBowling ( user| talk) 04:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
- ZacBowling, unsurprisingly, bots are imperfect. Express your concerns to the bot operator. Cullen328 ( talk) 04:52, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
At present there are two policies on this page addressing the same thing:
- A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username.
- It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents.
There was a RfC in 2021 which closed with the consensus against signatures being required to correspond exactly to usernames and no consensus to require that signatures be easily recognizable to a new user as referring to the username they link to.
The two conclusions from the RFC were:
- "There is significant opposition to the point where it is clear there is a consensus that signatures are not required to display someone's username in its entirety, without changes."
- "There is therefore no requirement that signatures be easily recognizable to a new user as referring to the username they link to."
It seems only the second guideline (above) adheres to this consensus, so the obvious solution is to remove the first one. However when I tried to do this it was undone by another editor. So I'm bringing the discussion here. Thanks. WikiMane (TP2001) ( talk) 14:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
-
ThunderPeel2001, why did you
reimplement your disputed edit before getting any responses to this question? –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 21:02, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
- Because I'm a naughty Wikipedian :-P Note that actually it wasn't the same edit, I moved the second point to more prominence because I reached out to the editor who undid my edit on their talk page... and they refused to discuss their edit, which led me to think they hadn't even read the whole list before undoing the original change I made. WikiMane (TP2001) ( talk) 10:04, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- I note the second conclusion also states
I would add that the existing advice on the subject could be worded more strongly regardless of it not being a hard requirement
. I don't think we need both of the bullets, but it would be reasonable for someone to support stronger language in the merged version. Anomie ⚔ 11:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)- Do you have a proposal? It seems hard to find wording that is both strongly suggestive to new users but also won't be used as a cudgel by other well-meaning editors.
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 10:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Maybe "A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username, but this is not required."? 🤷
Anomie
⚔ 11:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think that works. Do we keep the second point, too?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 16:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- I'd have just one bullet point, with the footnote from the second existing bullet included.
Anomie
⚔ 21:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed. Although just thinking about this with fresh eyes, what's wrong with: "It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents, but it is not required."? Do you think it's too soft?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 21:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- That is too soft. One reason people opposed requiring signatures to match user names is that a significant number of excellent editors started years ago with a user name that no longer appeals and they have signatures that don't draw attention to it. This guideline/policy is mainly for the future and newer editors should be encouraged to have comprehensible signatures. The fact that the policy does not say "a signature must match the user name" is sufficient leeway for cases like yours. You have "TP2001" in the signature and that's fine.
Johnuniq (
talk) 02:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, updated with @ Anomie's suggestion. Thanks! WikiMane (TP2001) ( talk) 20:59, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- That is too soft. One reason people opposed requiring signatures to match user names is that a significant number of excellent editors started years ago with a user name that no longer appeals and they have signatures that don't draw attention to it. This guideline/policy is mainly for the future and newer editors should be encouraged to have comprehensible signatures. The fact that the policy does not say "a signature must match the user name" is sufficient leeway for cases like yours. You have "TP2001" in the signature and that's fine.
Johnuniq (
talk) 02:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed. Although just thinking about this with fresh eyes, what's wrong with: "It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents, but it is not required."? Do you think it's too soft?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 21:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- I'd have just one bullet point, with the footnote from the second existing bullet included.
Anomie
⚔ 21:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think that works. Do we keep the second point, too?
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 16:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Maybe "A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username, but this is not required."? 🤷
Anomie
⚔ 11:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Do you have a proposal? It seems hard to find wording that is both strongly suggestive to new users but also won't be used as a cudgel by other well-meaning editors.
WikiMane (TP2001) (
talk) 10:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)