Guild Wars Wiki talk:Sign your comments/Draft 20071226

New proposal

As promised, I did some rewriting of the current signature policy. Primary changes include reducing the wordiness of several sections, removing the still-controversial restrictions that were previously agreed, and in general made it more relaxed. As has been the general trend of the call for change, this is primarily aimed at preventing literal and zealot interpretations of the policy while still maintaining a possible avenue (via discussion and RFC) to resolve and consider policy violations. -- ab.er.rant 10:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Gordon that much of this can be made a guideline instead. I do think a few hard rules are needed, as only users can change their preferences. I think spliting it would also make it clear whagt parts are required and which are suggested. As it is, I can't tell myself in some cases. Backsword 14:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

" **Do not use characters that are not in your user name to represent the characters in your name. For example, substituting characters in a manner such as leet speak makes it difficult for users to interpret your name." /fail. As is forcing us to register a second username and make a redirect on the page of a shorter version of a user page. If my username is Armond Warblade, I'll just make my sig code [[User:Armond Warblade|Armond]], thanks. Armond 10:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That's fine, but that means you'll have to stop if someone else registers that name. It's there for the benefit of the user, so no one else can claim their name. Backsword 14:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Uh, no, if I'm registered as Armond Warblade and someone registers as Armond (or vice versa) they're trying to impersonate me 90% of the time. See User:SkuId. Armond 02:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Even if we go with your probabilities, there is no way for sysops to know if it's the 10% or the 90% in a given case. That's why it's a good idea for user:Armond Warblade to register user:Armond. Backsword 20:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I deliberately not bothered with a guideline, although I initially thought about it. The more I edit it, the more I feel that there's nothing much that you put into a guideline that you can't put it here, where there's context. What should go into the guideline? If hard rules get moved into the guidelines, then it's not enforceable. If hard rules stay, then this proposal is unacceptable. As has been shown repeatedly, arguments about signatures are trivial. Let convention determine the soft limits. The previously established limits has ultimately never been used as intended, and they overshadowed the spirit of the policy.

As for the case of restricting signatures to usernames, we have User:Lemming64 and User:Lemming - they're different people. Unless either tries to pretend to be the other or does something to confuse others, we don't have a problem. The intent needs to be taken into consideration. If a new "User:Armond Warblade" attempts to sign as "Armond", drop him a message telling him that he can't, simply because "User:Armond" was here first and talk pages everywhere bear that signature. If "User:Armond Warblade" refuses to comply, then we have a basis for further action. We don't enforce that signatures must contain the username only, so I feel it doesn't make sense to tell people to register whatever they sign. Yes, it can a good measure to prevent obvious impersonation, but for the majority of users, that won't happen. Also, it implies that I should register all slight variations to my signatures too, indirectly encouraging the creation of a lot of unnecessary dummy accounts. -- ab.er.rant 16:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I've done a quick scroll of the diff to the current policy. I'm okay with anything but the following: (note, I might have missed something)

• Imo the dealing with unsigned comments needs to be in the same place as in the current policy, not at the bottom.
• Replace the stuff under the 'Links' heading with: "You must at least include a link to your user page or your talk page. Your signature may also include a link to a page related to you personal wiki usage, such as your contributions page or a personal wiki project page. Any other internal or external links are not allowed in your signature."

The first one is so that people wont miss it because they aren't interested in the formatting section and the latter is to make the policy a bit more allowing in a reasonable manner. -- (gem / talk) 21:31, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I moved the section back up, and I only reworded the first sentence for the links. I disagree with allowing people to link to personal projects because that could create really long signatures. For example, if I were to emulate your wiki improvement project, my sig might turn into something like this: "-- [[User:Ab.er.rant|ab.er]].[[User talk:Ab.er.rant|<span style="font-variant: small-caps">rant</span>]] [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] <small>([[User:Ab.er.rant/Projects/My improvement project|improve the wiki!]])</small>". I think it's just gonna get ugly, especially for people who already have a lot more formatting in their sig. It's like advertising, since we disallow advertising of external sites, we should disallow advertising of internal pages as well. If it's an important community project, we should be revamping GWW:CP into something more user-friendly and more general-purpose instead. -- ab.er.rant 13:54, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy with the changes. :) -- (gem / talk) 00:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I support these changes. --Xeeron 11:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a new year

Bumpity bump. Come on, no one's interested in this? This has been sitting here for so long and yet the newer proposal already trumps this talk page in the number of users :/ I guess not many users are interested in the signature policy then. -- ab.er.rant 14:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The diff link isn't really helpful, so much is reworded. What's the main changes with this draft? - anja 14:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I originally did not include the diff link, someone else added it. My change summary is summarised at the top of this talk page. Primary objectives: (1) Simplify it. (2) Increase flexibility.

This should be a more complete list of changes:

• Split the old "purpose" section into a new concise "Purpose" section and a longer introductory paragraph.
• Shortened the explanations on the when, why, and how to use signatures; plus more links to other relevant policies and help.
• Made the part of signature customisation to be less strict, less wordy, and more about soft limits. It's better to read the whole thing though - I've reworded most of the hard limits and shortened or merged or even introduced some new lines to deal with potentially problematic signatures. No glaring colours, no external links, same-sized icon, no hard limit on length, no readability-disrupting font formatting, removed the create-another-account-to-redirect part, be nice, do not attempt to impersonate, no transclusion... most of it is still there, but I hope to introduce a bit more subjectivity to make it more open for interpretation.
• Removed the part about how to deal with violations - that should be left up to admins.

-- ab.er.rant 05:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions

I've finally managed to read this draft and I just want to suggest a few things.

Under Appearance:

• Change the line about big, sup, sub and br to read; "Markup tags or styles that increase your text size, repositions the text, or otherwise changes the flow of the text, as well as line breaks (such as <br />) are not allowed."
  

Reason being; there are more than one way to affect the flow of the text.

• Add the line; "Change of font family is restricted to generic font families only, such as: serif, sans-serif, monospace, cursive or fantasy."
  

Reason being; not all fonts have the same line-height, so you could theoretically change the flow of text simply by changing font. Also, it ensures the text would show up basically the same on every computer.

Under Images:

• Add the line; "If an image is used in your signature, it must include an empty alternative text for accessibility reasons. For example; [[Image:User <user name> sig.png| ]] (note the space between the | and ]] characters). Alternatively, if the image redirects to your talk page, specify "Talk" or similar as alternative text."

Reason being; seeing as we currently don't allow having only an image as sig, the user obviously already has his username specified. For a screen reader, my sig (without alternative text) would turn out: "Galil Image:User Galil sig.png <date>". with an empty alternative text, it would merely read: "Galil <date>", or as I have it now (redirecting to my talk page): "Galil Talk <date>". — Galil 11:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

All looks good to me, you should add them in. :) - BeX 14:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with them, but I have questions. I don't believe the policy specifically disallows the use of a sig that includes only an image. For the accessibility reason, I find it somewhat unnecessary due the naming we've adopted. Would it be confusing if you saw "Galil Image:User Galil sig.png <date>"? It's clear that it's an image. I'd like a reword of that line to not use "must". One reason I find accessibility to be less of a concern (and I removed the part about colour blindness for this reason) is that I find it unlikely that there would be GW players who would severely affected by these issues. -- ab.er.rant 13:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The policy says "Clearly display your username in your signature.". If your user name is one letter, then it doesn't matter cause you could fit it in an image 19x19. Otherwise they are in violation. - BeX 00:29, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, not only people with screen readers have use of the alternative texts. People that turned off images in their browser will see the text instead, users of lynx would only see the alternative text (which I use every now and then), etc. Seeing as I can't think of any reason not to specify one, I added it as a suggestion. That's just what it is though, a suggestion so if it isn't wanted, feel free to remove it. ;) — Galil 01:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind it as a suggestion. I was just not too fond of the wording. I'll go and tweak it a little. Bex, this proposal doesn't have that line. -- ab.er.rant 06:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds a bit silly weird to force everyone to include an empty alt text if we also allow using only an image. That would provide no link whatsoever for screen readers and people not viewing images. I think it should say something like "provide an alt text, even an empty text helps" but in nicer words. :P - anja 08:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, as I said above, I'm of the opinion that the ratio of people who use screen readers or text browsers on this wiki to be extremely small compared to those who don't. That line is already quite long, so if anything I'd like to shorten it rather than add more explanation to it. It would be nice if the existing meaning can be merged with Anja's point though. It would appear that having no accessibility text is better than an empty accessibility text when it comes to sigs with no readable words (such as those that include a combination of leetspeak chars in them). -- ab.er.rant 09:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Final call

I like the proposal except for one minor thing:

"Change of font family is restricted to generic font families only"

I think we should rather change this to something like "Avoid using hardly readable or uncommon font families and always provide a common alternative font family". For example when I set a font to something special which is not installed for example this one, the alternative font will be displayed instead for those who don't have the font installed. This change would allow some people, like brains, to keep their signatures. poke | talk 12:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that would be better, I don't see most fonts as disruptive - anja 13:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't have strong opinions either way. I believe the idea for that point is that certain fonts do increase line height at standard size. -- ab.er.rant 00:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

There's so many chages to the policy that I'm not clear on what it's supposed to achieve. Could someone summarise the intended effect? Backsword 17:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

See the "It's a new year" section above. -- ab.er.rant 06:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

A tad late (since this draft is already in use), but now that I take another look at my own suggestions I see that the font family one was a bit reduntant. The whole point of it was, as Ab.er.rant managed to pick up, that some fonts change line height at standard size. Those cases would fall from "[snip] increase your text size, repositions the text, or otherwise changes the flow of the text [snip]", though. — Galil 03:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Unsigned or subst:unsigned

Shouldn't unsigned comments be marked with {{subst:unsigned}} rather than {{unsigned}}? -- Gordon Ecker 02:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I am definitely a supporter of substituting possibly the most used template on the wiki. It makes sense on many different levels. - BeX 02:43, 1 February 2008 (UTC)