Forum:Signature policy

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DoorToNothing — I dreamed last night... I got on the boat to Heaven! And by some chance, I had brought my dice along! — 02:20, December 12, 2010 (UTC) As I have discovered from reviewing the results and forum-condemned brackets of the Kingdom Hearts Wiki's "The Keyblade War" tournament, I am noticing a difficulty in checking signatures to make sure they are non-anon (by signature), as well as with reading the votes and signatures. Many signatures are extremely elaborate, with flashing colors and graphics, use incredibly large images that actually force the line of text to be larger, which looks terrible and breaks continuity in writing/conversation, and/or does not display the name of the user directly or at all, instead forcing the reader to leave the page in order to see who the user is. As we continue to develop in our creativity and... elegancy brutality of graphics in our signatures, which has done nothing but become very overbearing and disruptive over the last few months, I am proposing a signature policy for the Kingdom Hearts Wiki. Now, before I begin, this wiki is going to become a practical fansite, so this may not apply to the contributors or viewers that solely read and do not contribute to discussion or editing of the wiki productively... which sadly is an actual percentage of the wiki that cannot be ignored. However, this policy, if agreed upon, will be taken to the new Kingdom Hearts Wiki and carried out there. This policy almost directly mirrors the Final Fantasy Wiki's policy on signatures. The reason? Compare how clean their tournament brackets are to ours in terms of the signatures' brutality, nuisance-like qualities, ability to tell who the author is, and the numbers of breaks in lines due to obtrusive images: FFWiki: Image Image Image Image Image Image KHWiki: Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Please leave your comments and proposals that may be required to make this policy an agreeable one. Personally, I am absolutely tired of having to click on a user's signature, which sometimes forces you have to even go through the annoying and unnecessary trouble of finding the link in the signature, to see who wrote the corresponding message. Seeing pictures and characters that are tall, large, and aren't needed to simply say "I WROTE THIS" is aesthetically unpleasing and do not settle well with me either. Lastly, I already discussed this with several KHWiki IRC-goers, and we all found this to be an acceptable policy we can benefit from. We all importantly agreed that while signatures are a form of user expression, expression does not require being obtrusive and disruptive with what you use to display yourself.

Proposed Policy

• All signatures must clearly display the username of the posting user. Since this is the English Kingdom Hearts Wiki, all signatures must also use a Latin script (A, B, C... X, Y, Z) to display the user name.
  • For those of you with creative Japanese signatures, these will still be allowed, so long as your usual user name has already been written out in Latin characters.
  • Abridging is fine, so long as the author of the comment is still obvious.
• All signatures must be followed or include a timestamp. This is not a large issue since this is already being done for the most part, but without a timestamp, we cannot tell when a discussion has taken place, and therefore its relevance/acknowledgment of other related discussions.
• NO MORE UNNECESSARILY AND OBNOXIOUSLY LARGE IMAGES. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. Images must fit within the size parameters of the text, which is 15px. This shall be the limit for image size.
• All signatures must link to at least the central user page of the posting user, i.e. not their "Userpage+" or user sub-page. Those can be linked to as well, of course, but the central user page is a necessity.

Comments

SilverCrono Well, I can tell who you are. — "Looks like you're prepared." "What is with you and picking up stray puppies?" — 02:26, December 12, 2010 (UTC) As Doorsey said, this policy already happened at the FFwiki. I approved of it there, and I approve of it here. Obnoxious sigs are obnoxious, and annoyed Crono is annoyed.

Chitalian8 Say... — Only by allowing strangers in can we find new ways to be ourselves. Life's little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger. — 02:30, December 12, 2010 (UTC) I approve of this policy. Also, certain signatures have are missing tags, this one comes to mind. It turns all of the following text into that font.

I'm for this policy, and I think you covered probably the most important points. It reminds me of the HRWiki signature policy, which seems a reasonable guideline for signatures. --Neumannz, The Dark Falcon 02:31, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

KrytenKoro - "I'm the doctor, I'm the patient. Don't forget that - it's important! If you love me like I love me, everybody will be sorry." TALK - Images need to be in-line, yeah that makes sense. Timestamp is automatic, as long as you use all four tildes. However, that the signature most contain your username. Even on the ffwiki, I'm seeing a lot of people just signing with initials, or some other thing. Also, as long as your signature links to your talk page (something I can agree on), you just have to mouseover the link, or if you are editing, the name is there. I can agree with the changes made to prevent disrupting the page, and to make sure you are accessible, but I can't agree with telling everyone "Your signature has to be "username timestamp".

maggosh The steel is forged... — "Souls as far as the eye can see..." "If you want light to rule over all, then you must rid the world of everything else." Neither can I. I side with Kryten on this. Plus I'm surprised, DTN, that you don't know about the mouseover trick.

Soxra - The only blind person at Christmastime is he who has not Christmas in his heart. Christmas talk! - Soxxeh 02:33, December 12, 2010 Agreed 100%, particularly about the super-high images. I've also noticed the few signatures that are completely generic. It borders on an unsigned vote, in the case of TKW. (Except images can be up to 17px high, unless the line is affected by <small> or another text-size change.) Chitalian, usually that isn't an issue if the CORRECT tags are left open. Signatures almost always have a newline after them, which cuts off all the formatting from bleeding into other posts. But I do think there should be a policy against this as most people aren't sure what the CORRECT tags are. Also, I agree with Kryten's points. As long as there's a link to the user page, initials or nicknames should be okay.

Chitalian8 Say... — Only by allowing strangers in can we find new ways to be ourselves. Life's little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger. — 02:34, December 12, 2010 (UTC) The problem is, Soxra, in things like TKW, there are no new lines, just votes one line after another. EDIT: Also, what is it you mean by "generic?" Are you talking about a signature that is just the username, then timestamp?

Soxra - Surely you must've known that this was going to happen. Have something to say...? - Soxxeh 02:39, December 12, 2010 @Newlines, yes, but I thought the bullets cut off the formatting. I might be wrong. @Generic: I mean ones that are just an image (there's one that is just Sephiroth's face; I'd tell you whose it was, except I don't know). Generic as in unidentifiable.

17master Jingle! — Santa Claus is coming to town! Snow! Lights! Snowmans! Bells! Hot chocolate! Presents! okay I've changed my signature to meet the criteria of the policy. Now, can timestamps made automatic or do we have to type ~~~~~ besides our signature?

Soxra - Surely you must've known that this was going to happen. Have something to say...? - Soxxeh 05:03, December 12, 2010 ~~~ -> Signature. ~~~~ -> Signature, Timestamp. ~~~~~ -> Timestamp. So just use ~~~~.

Neumannz — Looks like I'm gonna have to jump...! TALK — I work alone! Except when I work with Xion...which is all the time. — 05:06, December 12, 2010 (UTC)   Depends on how you do it. If you have your signature set under Preferences, then it should be automatic. Otherwise, you'll have to use the five tildes. I would like to bring up another point about signatures, though. Now everyone has started putting their signatures into the Template namespace in order to make easy changes, especially re: pictures. But for the sake of keeping the number of templates set aside for user use to a minimum, I would like to suggest moving them back to the userspaces. There are ways to do this and still get around the SUBST thing the auto-signature function does.

JFHavoc Talk to Me! — There's no way a man that fat could fit down a chimney. He's probably diabetic after eating all those cookies. — 05:08, December 12, 2010 (UTC) Seems reasonable to me.

17master Jingle! — Santa Claus is coming to town! Snow! Lights! Snowmans! Bells! Hot chocolate! Presents! @Soxra: no, I'm talking about customized signature's timestamp. @neumannzz: preferences? what's that?

Neumannz — Looks like I'm gonna have to jump...! TALK — I work alone! Except when I work with Xion...which is all the time. — 05:23, December 12, 2010 (UTC)   ...I... what? You get to Preferences by clicking on the dropbox with your username in the top-right corner of the screen. Scroll down until you find the options for your signature. Speaking of, you should check on yours. Your signature is making all the text that follows it to green Times New Roman.

Soxra - Surely you must've known that this was going to happen. Have something to say...? - Soxxeh 05:26, December 12, 2010 @Neumannz: He's missing a </font> tag at the end of his second link. @17m: There's a really complex way of making it so you don't have to do the five tildes. But it's WAY easier to just do the five tildes.

Complex? I've never had to use the five tildes, it's always added a timestamp automatically, and I barely did anything to set up my sig... --Neumannz, The Dark Falcon 05:28, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

Soxra - This party's getting crazy! Let's rock! It's showtime! - Soxxeh 05:30, December 12, 2010 As far as I can tell, 17m doesn't mean the basic timestamp obtained by the four-tilde signature insert. He wants one in his signature itself, to be able to be colored/fonted/shadowed... like in mine: Soxxeh 05:30, December 12, 2010

IceCreamRockz Talk to Me! — Call me Raven. In other words, it would be best if you just died. — 05:32, December 12, 2010 (UTC) I apologize about cutting in your conversation, but I believe that earlier, Chitalian8 mentioned that my signature was bleeding its text to the text after. I've fixed my signature, and I'll decrease the size of my picture to 15 pixels immediately. Thank you, Chitalian, for bringing that up. I approve of this signature policy, and I believe that every user should abide by it.

EDIT CONFLICT: @17master For that, you have to create an autosig page, put your template in that, and them use that autosig in your custom signature in preferences, it gives you an automatic timestamp. Chitalian8 05:33, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

Soxra - This party's getting crazy! Let's rock! It's showtime! - Soxxeh 05:34, December 12, 2010 ICR, if you want to edit the height of an image to 15px, you want to do [[File:some_file_name.png|x15px]], including that "x" before the 15. Otherwise, you're setting the width. ;) PS: Last message in this conversation for today. Just got a glance at the time.

Yep, I've got that. I already fixed it. 快一点 给我 冰淇凌 ！！！ 05:36, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

Eternal Nothingness XIII - Ven, Aqua... I'll find some way to make things right. TALK - This light... it's so warm. — 01:07, December 16, 2010 (UTC) I agree with Kryten's standpoint on things. Some of us use the "option" feature on our signatures. The mouseover will remove any uncertainty as to who's who, and as long as your main username using the standard alphabet ("A,B,C,D...") is within the list of possible choices, I don't see how there's anything wrong with doing this. In terms of image sizes - I've seen Wikis that don't allow images, and I've seen them with size limitations. I think it all just depends on the image you're using. An image like File:DL Aqua.png is practically unreadable at a smaller size than 90px. Same for File:DL AquaAvatar1.png, which is hardly visible or idtentifiable like the user wants as the images's subject at a size smaller than 50px. Keyblade images are popular in signatures and are only visible at at least 30-35px. Character renders are very hard to fit into signatures, and should not be used AT ALL, since no matter how you size them, they're still a nuisance in things like the Keyblade War or Mirage Arena, taking up too much space. The point I'm trying to make is that people use the images to decorate their signatures. They're just empty and extra space if you can't see them. That's why, for the sake of the community, we should create different pixel limits for each image type (Keyblades, D-Link Images, etc) rather than one applicable for all.

DoorToNothing — I dreamed last night... I got on the boat to Heaven! And by some chance, I had brought my dice along! — 01:38, December 16, 2010 (UTC) ...ENX, you just missed the entire point of image restrictions. We aren't lowering the requirement to 15px to make images look terrible. Actually, the way an image looks does not matter in this policy. We chose 15px because this is the height of the text, and anything else spaces out the text and makes it look horrible--like in your message. Therefore, making any pixel limit that is about 15px is completely against this policy and idea and does not solve a single thing that we are trying to accomplish. Similarly, images are optional in a signature, so this is like a restriction on them that only applies if you choose to use them.

The problem I have with that argument is that the idea that the policy should allow for users to choose the pictures they want kind of negates the point of having a policy in the first place. Not that we can't be more lax than x15px in height. After all, x20px is still small enough to fit on a single line with no trouble whatsoever. And I don't think File:DL Aqua.png and File:DL AquaAvatar1.png are too unrecognizable. --Neumannz, The Dark Falcon 01:36, December 16, 2010 (UTC)

Eternal Nothingness XIII - This heart belongs again to darkness. All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end. The heart is no different. Darkness sprouts within it—it grows, consumes it. Such is its nature. In the end, every heart returns to the darkness whence it came. TALK - Your body submits, your heart succumbs—so why does your mind resist? — 01:59, December 16, 2010 (UTC) It seems to me that now we're just making policies for the sake of making them. The issue was brought about because of something as stupid and irrelevant as the Keyblade War. Signatures and the images in them have little to no effect on a talk page, especially since 3/4 of us use talk bubbles anyways, and those of us that don't use talk bubbles 24/7 have signatures that fit the requirements of this little policy you all are trying to create. The only time where this could be a problem would be in another Keyblade War-like situation, the Mirage Arena, which is COMPLETELY FOR FUN and has NO EFFECT on Mainspace. Hence it should NOT be a problem. I don't see why we can't be more leniant and just say "Fine. We can't expect you all to obey." Warning/banning someone because they fail to abide by a signature policy (which it is inevitible that this will be the case eventually) is sort of lame in the grand scheme of things in the long, sad history of things to be warned/banned for. The fact that three quarters of a policy is based on ONE PERSON's OPINION rather than a majority of the community (which I really don't see how their input matters, sometimes) really makes it not worth having. A worthwhile policy is one that the COMMUNITY feels should be enacted. Community support is saying "Yeah, I notice that too. We should develop this, and here's how I think how...". Saying "I approve of this one person's idea, let's do it" is NOT getting the community support needed for a policy. It's simply saying "My opinion doesn't matter. May as well just follow the crowd." In terms of the actual image sizes, we're STILL enforcing a policy of sorts, granted it's much more lax than "All images must be 15px or DIE!" Some users here have character themes they like to use. And they want to put an image in their signature to enhance/reference that. If you're going to put a 20px image of Aqua in your signature to represent your Aqua theme, you may as well put a blue dot in the image's place, since that's all you see! In the end, I am not any different than a regular user. But I felt that I should put the two cents in from people who agree with my viewpoint on this for those who wouldn't do it themselves. Now that I have done that, I trust the WIKI AS A WHOLE to make the right decision.

That's not really what you mean. You mean you trust the wiki as a whole to agree with your opinions.

The fact is, I don't really know why we've never had a signature policy of any kind before. As one of those things that are up to users to create and customize, it really only makes sense for there to be a policy so that they're aren't disruptive. On contrary to what you believe, there is no reason to tolerate disruption on talk pages any more than on the Keyblade War pages. --Neumannz, The Dark Falcon 02:16, December 16, 2010 (UTC)

SilverCrono Well, I can tell who you are. — "It wasn't a compliment." "From where I stood the only thing you drew was a big L on your forehead for "Loser," "Lame," "Laughable"..." — 02:35, December 16, 2010 (UTC) Alright, here's what I see, ENX. I don't see why we can't be more leniant and just say "Fine. We can't expect you all to obey." Because that would make the point of a "policy" completely useless. The point of a policy is to make rules for everyone to follow. The fact that three quarters of a policy is based on ONE PERSON's OPINION rather than a majority of the community (which I really don't see how their input matters, sometimes) really makes it not worth having. One person's opinion that was agreed on by a multitude of users. Almost everything is made because of one person's opinion, why is this any different? A worthwhile policy is one that the COMMUNITY feels should be enacted. Community support is saying "Yeah, I notice that too. We should develop this, and here's how I think how...". Saying "I approve of this one person's idea, let's do it" is NOT getting the community support needed for a policy. It's simply saying "My opinion doesn't matter. May as well just follow the crowd." The community is talking about it. You're the one busting in making a huge fuss about this. Lots of people have submitted their opinion and ideas for changes, that's the point of this forum. Also, I think that second quote was directed at me. Just because I agree with the policy and I choose to keep it going does not make me a simple sheep or lemming. Having an opinion and approving of a policy =/= following a crowd. In fact, I posted a comment first, so your logic is moot. In terms of the actual image sizes, we're STILL enforcing a policy of sorts, granted it's much more lax than "All images must be 15px or DIE!" ...Who said that? Some users here have character themes they like to use. And they want to put an image in their signature to enhance/reference that. If you're going to put a 20px image of Aqua in your signature to represent your Aqua theme, you may as well put a blue dot in the image's place, since that's all you see! So don't use an Aqua picture, or get another, better one. An image on a signature being resized isn't as serious as you chock it up to be. In the end, I am not any different than a regular user. But I felt that I should put the two cents in from people who agree with my viewpoint on this for those who wouldn't do it themselves. Now that I have done that, I trust the WIKI AS A WHOLE to make the right decision. Pretty much what Neumannz said. You have an opinion, and you trust the "community" to join your cause, the "right decision" - now you're the one telling people to follow a crowd. Please don't make misguided statements like this, man.

My view - it is a pain in the ASS to fix image links when they appear in signatures, and most of our images need to be renamed. At the very least, we should have a policy that if people are using our images in signatures, they should be called through a template, so that only one edit needs to be made to fix the links on every page they appear."We're werewolves, not swearwolves." (KrytenKoro) 02:38, December 16, 2010 (UTC)