On 6/5/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I think we can all agree that in cases where a signature really does significantly hinder editing, it should be reduced to the point where it doesn't.
I'm not sure we will ever agree on a quantitative way of deciding that. The annoyance is a qualtitative effect, so the inability to put a good number on it won't be helpful.
If you set a hard number, people will just come up with creative ways to be annoying within that number of characters. If we do have any guidelines, better for them to be qualtitative, IMO. It will cause occasional back-and-forth but if people start complaining about individual signatures then it's probably a good indication that it is enough of a nuisance to require some changing.
For me, the annoyance is almost entirely proportional to the number of characters taken up in wikitext, so it's quantitative not qualitative. Set a hard limit of 70 chars and I'll be happyish. 35 and I'll be twice as happy. You don't want to see what would happen if it was 17.5.
The visual effects of colourful signatures are actually mildly benefical to me, if anything.
Steve