[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

[John Lee]

Guettarda wrote:

>On 6/5/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 5 Jun 2006 at 00:08, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Tony: I agree, cutsie sigs are as annoying as hell, too, but: are
>>>they *really* that big a problem in the grand scheme of things?
>>>      
>>>
>>The "cutesie sigs" problems seems to be like the userbox problem all
>>over again... once again you have a bunch of users who seem to be
>>treating Wikipedia like another Myspace or LiveJournal, and another
>>bunch of editors/admins who are so offended by this that they insist
>>on taking draconian action against the first group... and then both
>>groups escalate matters and get much more heated-up about it than the
>>whole silly issue deserves.
>>    
>>
>
>
>Except that, while there is a rationale for complaining about the userbox
>issue (campaigning, divisive userboxes, etc), there is no inherent problem
>with sigs beyond the obvious space usage and that, while it can be annoying,
>rarely poses a real problem, since sigs belong at the end of paragraphs.
>It's certainly no more of a problem than is subst:'ing {{unsigned}}
>
>Not only is the software set up to use custom sigs, they are also quite
>useful.  It takes two clicks to get to the talk page of a standard sig like
>I use, only one with a custom sig.  It's also easier to follow conversations
>long conversations when you can pick out the sigs without reading them
>(though that may only apply to people who read "whole paragraph").  That
>said, of course, there's nothing wrong with refactoring sigs on your talk
>page.  Of course, since it's Tony doing it, it looks like WP:POINT, yet
>again.  Once again, the cure seems worse than the disease (from a person
>with an unformatted sig and only one "vanity" userbox)
>
>Ian
>  
>
I think the problem is not so much with custom sigs as with people who 
use fancy coding. It's irritating, especially when editing in a tight 
spot with a lot of extraneous HTML code. (Try closing an [[WP:RFD]] and 
you'll see what I mean.) The best custom sigs (such as mine) get their 
point across without having to resort to too much HTML. Mine is entirely 
in wikicode, because all the customisation it has is a link to my talk. 
This isn't a really big problem, though, IMO. Nevertheless, on one's own 
talk page, as long as the substance of the comment is unaltered, there 
shouldn't be anything wrong with altering customisation-heavy sigs.

John