On 6/5/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan(a)tobias.name>
wrote:
On 5 Jun 2006 at 00:08, Steve Summit
<scs(a)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