[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures (was: cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism userbox)

Mon Jun 5 12:45:38 UTC 2006

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