Guild Wars Wiki talk:Sign your comments

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Feedback

Hai guise.

Are feedback links acceptable in signatures? They don't have the can't-get-to-image-easily issue Emmett outlined above.

A F K When Needed 20:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and sorry if I missed consensus above, but it seemed to be left in the air. A F K When Needed 20:29, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with pling's comment. Not a useful addition. -- FreedomBound 23:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Use of an image.

Someone has found an interesting loophole and, of course, a controversy has arisen. Spanish Shadow uses a single (one) image twice in her signature. Even the revision just made does not clarify the propriety of this particular creative maneuver. The image is smaller than usual so it is not an issue of screen space or bandwidth. --Max 2 16:44, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

That issue has been resolved and the policy amended to clarify that. poke | talk 16:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I see that Shadow has been brow-beaten into submission, but there is still a problem with the policy as stated; a problem you might miss because English is not your native language. Shadow only used one image repeatedly. The ambiguity is between the number of different 'File:...'s and the number of references to 'File:...'s. By implication, the policy means the number of references is limited to one and that multiple references to the same 'File:...' are not allowed, but it does not say that. It fails to distinguish between 'File:...'s and references to 'File:...'s. --Max 2 17:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

You're probably right, but I really can't come up with a wording that explains just that and doesn't suck. Suggestions? — Why 21:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that should fall into the "we know what it means, so no wikilawyering" category.

If you still feel the need to fall for trolling make it clearer, how about something like "A single instance of a single small image or icon may be included in your signature"?.--Fighterdoken 21:56, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Works for me, if it seriously is required... - J.P.Talk 22:32, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

What on earth is wrong with that signature? Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ аІiсә ѕνәи Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ 00:40, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Timestamps

I'm not a fan of the custom timestamps that have been popping up. One of the most important things about timestamps is their uniformity - format (i.e. "24h time, day full-month-name year (UTC)"), colour, and size. The custom timestamps, by their very nature, differ quite a lot. Some examples:

• 20:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
• 08:09, 28 July 2010
• 21:06, 28 Jul 2010 (UTC)
• 17:30, 27 Jul 2010 (UTC)
• 6:44, 27 Jul 2010 (UTC)

The normal timestamp, for comparison, is:

• 21:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to add something like "Do not use a customised timestamp in your signature" in the "Customizing your signature" section, maybe under "Appearance". Maybe it could be better worded, but that's the essence of this proposal. -- pling 21:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy q_q - Mini Me talk 21:26, 28 July 2010

I Dont think the ones in the grey font or small sizes are so bad.. though i do hate the pink font, How about "No obnoxious timestamp fonts" ?--Neil2250 21:28, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Ya it's starting to get distracting. I'm in support of standardizing the timestamp. --Dominator Matrix 21:28, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That last one makes me throw up a little in my mouth.--Neil2250 21:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I find all custom timestamps annoying to the eye. - J.P.Talk 22:23, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't have much of a problem with them, though as soon as they turn different colours (sharply) and fonts, there's an issue. Examples such as the first on on the list are fine imo. However, I wouldn't be opposed to a complete ban on custom timestamps. Shadow Runner 22:26, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Just keep to greyscale & a set font? --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 22:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with your premise:

"One of the most important things about timestamps is their uniformity"

Why is this one of the most important things about timestamps? — Raine Valen 23:23, 28 Jul 2010 (UTC)

I love you too, Neil. --- NessHrin | 23:28, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Because timestamps should be easy to differentiate, and if you're looking at the formatting, it can be difficult for us old some people to quickly see the time difference. That being said, I'm not too concerned with any of the examples (except for the last -- thought it was comic sans at first), but if anyone has a custom timestamp that is not UTC, that would be really annoying. -- FreedomBound 23:50, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

24hr UTC, in order and readable seems like the only criteria needed. And maybe an aesthetic requirement for those with no taste. --67.240.88.57 00:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) So why not just standardize the format? 24h UTC? Obviously, having them all on the same time scale and in the same time zone is necessary, and I agree that that should be standardized by the policy.

What I don't agree with is standardizing the font, size, or color; any argument that could be made against their customization could be made against the same customization in a signature (i.e. "It's distracting", "It's hard to read", "It makes the information that it is intended to convey more difficult to instantly recognize"); precedent says that those issues aren't a big enough deal to standardize over. — Raine Valen 0:13, 29 Jul 2010 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I agree with Raine here. 24h UTC and readable is all I can see being enforced by policy. Colors and font and the rest of that stuff is up to the user (within reason, obviously - I don't think any of the examples listed are exceedingly hard to read, bar *maybe* Lania's pink one). -Auron 00:22, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I can sympathize with people who have difficulty reading certain font-faces/font-sizes/colors. Maybe at the most standardize time-stamps to greyscale, between x and x font-size, and whatever font families that include cursive/script faces... I strongly object to banning customization however... If you're looking for the timestamp it's easy enough to find, look for their name and then look to the right, read the time. I don't see a point to any argument other than difficulty of reading (such as hot pink or light grey). EDIT: Oh and UTC Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ аІiсә ѕνәи Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ 00:34, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

All for keeping the formatting consistent (i.e. Time, Date, (UTC)), but worrying about timestamps being ugly is pretty obnoxious. People always seem to be concerned that people will make ugly signatures, etc. Trust me, if you want an ugly, horrifying signature it is very easy to make it within the current rules. Anything about readibility is already covered by policy is it not? Misery 07:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I've changed my time-stamp for now, and reverted to the default color to black instead of magenta, just with smaller font. I realize that some colors render differently on different monitors and maybe colors like magenta render lighter as pink, making it harder to read. In any case, as long as timestamps are readable, standard format and UTC I don't see any problems with it. --Lania19:23, 30 Jul 2010 (UTC)

Tell me which one of these 'custom' time stamps are easy to read.

	Small	Colors	Fonts
Small	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)
Colors	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)
Fonts	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)	00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)
00:00, 1 January 1000 (UTC)

Look at it, and tell everyone what you think that really makes the time stamp harder to read. →[ »Halogod (talk)« ]← 21:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, on that last one, "(UTC)" kind of looks like "CUTO". — Raine Valen 21:28, 30 Jul 2010 (UTC)

Irrelevant. →[ »Halogod (talk)« ]← 22:22, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

That last one aside, the colors (excluding gray) are distracting from everything else. Just my thoughts, though. --- NessHrin | 22:51, 30 Jul 2010 (UTC)

I still don't really get the fuss over the time stamp. Is it really that important that it needs to all look the same? I see a lot of signatures that look way more distracting than a small timestamp with a different color. That said, the weird fonts are way too hard to read. As far as colors go, I didn't have any problems reading any of them with the standard fonts. --Lania 0:41, 31 Jul 2010 (UTC)

Ness - have you even looked at the color in people's signatures? Pling has a blue font and blue image. Dominator has a lime green sig. Freedom has a bold blue, Alice has a bright teal, Raine has a deep red, and Halogod has ridiculous green and blue text with a huge image in the middle as a sig. After all that, you're going to tell me that perfectly readable but differently colored timestamps are "distracting?" -Auron 01:14, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

"Look at it, and tell everyone what you think that really makes the time stamp harder to read." He asked which attribute made the timestamps harder to read. I feel that color is the most prominent difference of the presented options. I never said that all color on any form of a signature is a bad thing. I was merely answering his question. --- NessHrin | 1:29, 31 Jul 2010 (UTC)

And Auron's is black. That makes it a bitch to find at a glance. — Raine Valen 2:24, 31 Jul 2010 (UTC)

I always think it was someone that didn't sign until I find the -Auron tag. In anycase, what does it matter if the time stamp is even remotely hard to read? Is there some kind of admin action or janitorial type stuff that demands the utmost readability of the time stamp that I'm not aware of? Yes I changed my Sig color, now it's the same color as the red text on the GW2 website. Yay now I also have a gaudy signature! XD. --Lania 5:11, 31 Jul 2010 (UTC)

Well, a good example would be like the fact when there's posting on pages and people put the posts out of order because it's by reply, then the dates would be off. Also, like understanding when the edits were made on normal skill pages. Like if it was information from 2007, then it probably doesn't matter to current subject. People want to be able to come here and get the information they need without trying to decipher the shit. Like, if you had that last time stamp that looks like cuto, you're going to be there for a while. `→[ »Halogod (talk)« ]← 05:17, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone said anything about wanting to use impossible to read funky fonts. Color is about the only issue here. I can see how the talk page example would be annoying but using different colors that minimally impact readability would hardly be a burden on figuring out the order of the replies, or when the comment was posted. --Lania 6:07, 31 Jul 2010 (UTC)

Colored timestamps are not distracting or disruptive. If I started replacing the timestamp in my signature with 64-bit Unix time, that would be disruptive. (On a side note, I have wanted to do this for some time, but cbfed learning enough HTML to do it.) –Jette 0000000000000000000000000000000001001100010100111110111100001110

Time/date format

Ok, it seems there isn't consensus for standardising the appearance (e.g. colour, font, etc) - the normal rules for sig appearances would apply. However, the time/date format should still be standardised - full 24 hour time, full date, the UTC label. The time should include the 0 during a.m. times; I've seen some signatures that are "1:29" instead of "01:29", which could be ambiguous. Also, the month name should be in full: "August" instead of "Aug". -- pling 17:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, H:i, j F Y (UTC). poke | talk 17:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that poke, I wasn't entirely sure how to fix it. However, now there is a pesky 0 in front of non-double-digit dates. Oh well, small price. --- NessHrin | 18:49, 08 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a good idea and I agree. Poke, I used your time/date code to change my custom timestamp to conform :-). --Lania 21:57, 08 August 2010 (UTC)

{{CURRENTTIME}}, {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} (UTC)

That code gives you exactly what the (default) time stamp does (obviously if you use it in a sig, you'd have to subst each of them), in UTC time. (i'm not quite sure about the month one, there's also "CURRENTMONTHGEN" which gives the month name in genitive form, but me sucking at English language, doesn't understand the difference (it doesn't make a difference for August anyway). There are others that give slightly different outputs (see here) but I don't think most of them wouldn't be acceptable personally (such as having the month number instead of name), the only one that may be usable;e is the CURRENTDAY2 (which pads the date with a 0. Certainly, only the ones that are "CURRENT" should be used (they give UTC time instead of the LOCAL which goes by server ~ PheNaxKian talk 22:21, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

By the way, that takes up waaay too much space for a limited-character signature to be effective. --- NessHrin | 23:41, 08 August 2010 (UTC)

The point is you have the rest of your sig on a separate page (typically a user:Username/sig.js) and you have:

{{subst:User:Username/sig.js}} <span somecodetochangetimestamp> <!--the crap in the pre above --> </span> 

then you only sign with 3 tildes instead of 4 (otherwise you get a double timestamp), and you shouldn't hit the character limit (unless you have a really long username and are heavily customising the timestamp). ~ PheNaxKian talk 00:13, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

"H:i, d F Y (UTC)" — poke

The default is H:i, j F Y. The only difference is the 0 in front of single-digit dates, and it only really matters for the sake of consistency.

In other news, I don't see why H is required, since the standard is 24-hour, anyway: this eliminates and ambiguity ("3" can't be PM because there is no "3 PM"). Similarly, I don't see how "Aug" is any more ambiguous than "August"; they're both very clearly saying that the month is August and I don't believe anyone would question that.

Is there any particular reason why we're pushing for these to be dictated by policy? — Raine Valen 01:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Dictating is fun you hippie.--The Emmisary 01:54, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Sure as hell is, and that's why I'm wondering whether this is being dictated for a reason or because YAY DICTATING, GUYS!! — Raine Valen 01:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

It's probably more for relative consistency. May just be my interpretation, though. (Also, thanks for j > d) --- NessHrin | 02:04, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the questions we need to ask are:

"What is the purpose of a timestamp?"

• I'm under the impression that the purpose of a timestamp is to denote when an edit was made.

"How could a timestamp be altered?"

• One possible alteration would be cutting out unnecessary text while leaving the information unchanged (i.e. shortening "February" to "Feb").

"Would said alteration impede said purpose?"

• This wouldn't impede the purpose of a timestamp at all, unless I'm mistaken about the purpose of a timestamp?

So: is there any reason not to? — Raine Valen 02:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Also, you're very welcome. — Raine Valen 02:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really sure where this "push" for consistency and standardization came from, but this doesn't seem too oppressive as long as it doesn't end up being policy and chastise people who don't conform. Aug or August I don't really care. --Lania 05:23, 09 August 2010 (UTC)

My bad Raine, I have fixed it above. Thanks. poke | talk 06:51, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Timestamp Links

Would anyone be opposed to me making my timestamp a link to, say, my contribs? — Raine Valen 02:12, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed at all... then again I seem to be one of the renegades that like to really mess with the timestamp. --Lania 05:24, 09 August 2010 (UTC)

Your signature code is already pretty long. It's kind of bothersome when the sig takes up an entire line (in edit view) alone. Think of the children, or something. Vili 点 06:30, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Images, again

So, from what I understand, the point of limiting image size is "to avoid disrupting text spacing and readability". All well and good, but then why are we limiting the width of the picture too? I understand that a long signature presents issues and is disruptive, but the disruption doesn't start until well after the 19px mark. In fact, in a number of cases a wider signature image would be superior, such as in a signature in which the user alters the font color multiple times. The counterargument is that, due to increased file size, pages will take longer to load; however, our mission pages, with their maps of the mission, walkthroughs, and other various details, have considerably more content than most talk pages and have not run into this issue, so I think the point is moot.

Is there another reason for the limit on the width of images in signatures? If so, we should consider presenting it on the policy page or otherwise making it available to those who find the rule unintuitive; if not, we should consider altering the policy.

-- Armond Warblade 00:27, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps there should just be discretional admin approval for long signatures.. File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.jpg Chieftain Alex 00:29, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Because previously, admin discretion was something a whole a bunch of people argued against. The whole image thing was primarily to restrict it to an icon instead of an image, where having text was more readable than an image. Believe or not, I think I recall someone bringing up text-only browsers and something like that. :) But honestly, I can't remember the major reasons for those arguing for smaller pics in signatures anymore (and I can't be bothered to dig through the archives). -- ab.er.rant 06:22, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

There are gorgeous signatures and there are plain and ugly ones — either can be distractions if they fail to make it easy for people to read the discussion, see who posted what, or link to the user/talk page of the poster. The point of a signature on a talk page is to clarify attribution. As it turns out, that purpose allows for a good deal of leeway for people to express themselves using styles and images.

However, as is typical in situations like this, one person's freedom to stretch their arms has to end before their hand hits my nose: if the signature is a signature, then it probably shouldn't matter if it renders using image or just text. Once it becomes more about the artwork than about attribution, it's a distraction.

I don't think there's any way to legislate this: any set of rules we write are bound to be broken or wikilawyered to death...and that will become a different distraction to the wiki.

Short story: the current guidelines are clear enough (don't distract, stick to 19px icons) and allow for plenty of freedom of expression. If/when someone comes up with an image that fits within the spirit, then the admins we have are clever and able enough to use their discretion to allow an exception or two...or to decide it's not worth the trouble of trying to evaluate every image that someone wants to use. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)