Wikipedia talk:Signatures

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WT:SIG

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Guidelines and policies

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)[reply]

ThunderPeel2001, why did you reimplement your disputed edit before getting any responses to this question? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:02, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Maybe "A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username, but this is not required."? 🤷 Anomie ⚔ 11:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think that works. Do we keep the second point, too? WikiMane (TP2001) (talk) 16:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have just one bullet point, with the footnote from the second existing bullet included. Anomie ⚔ 21:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Ok, updated with @Anomie's suggestion. Thanks! WikiMane (TP2001) (talk) 20:59, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Government Sites like Texas.Gov are Free-Use

You recently erroneously deleted a whole page I created due to "Copyright Infringement" because I copied the text from the site, which is allowed in Texas. Texas allows free-use of the Government site content like the one I used and you were outside your lane deleting the whole thing. It was an award and I copied the EXACT Qualifications for the awards, the same way we post US Military Awards and qualifications here. We don't edit them or change them we post exactly how DOD/or the Branch lists it.

Please un-delete my page as you're incorrect. TheNathanMuir (talk) 18:22, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@TheNathanMuir: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Signatures. You should probably ask the person who deleted that page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:06, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fixing old format timestamps in others' signatures

At least signatures from 2002–2005 used some old timestamp formats like:

User:Example 22:50, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
User:Example 17:06, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

(these examples are from Talk:Chris_Claremont#List_of_X-Men_characters_created_by_Claremont).

These timestamps use the MDY format and/or shortened months.

Such signatures prevent the Reply button from showing up. Additionally, the "Latest comment: 19 years ago - 1 comment - 1 person in discussion" information section below the section header won't include these comments. You also can't subscribe to a section if it lacks that information section under the header.

So, if I see these old signatures, am I allowed to fix them by rearranging them to the DMY format and writing out the month? Or is there a planned fix for these in MediaWiki? Perhaps a bot run could be arranged to fix these? It should be an easy task, but would require tens of thousands of edits: [1], [2]. 2001:14BA:9C40:0:B03E:AC7D:4B9F:7666 (talk) 19:02, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about planned MediaWiki fixes, nor about bot tasks, but I do know that WP:TPO#Signature cleanup permits you may edit the signature to the standard form with correct information. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:25, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bug report about this situation at T246047, but as far as I know there are no plans to handle it in the software. Matma Rex talk 21:41, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

5 tildes style

Should the 5 tildes (~~~~~) be gray, to reflect the style on comment pages (e.g. see the end of this comment)? Tule-hog (talk) 23:47, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No. The style for the timestamp in a signature indicates that it is a link to where the signature was used. There was a mention of this at WP:VPT a couple of months ago. Johnuniq (talk) 01:41, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tule-hog: No. It's not grey where it is actually used - in the editing box. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:44, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]