Wikipedia talk:Signatures

Math tag in signatures?

I recently changed my signature to include a math tag. I believe it is displayed as an image on most systems. However, the rationale behind disallowing images does not transfer to math tags. So should it be allowed? 0xDeadbeef $\to \infty$ 15:01, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

It's against the spirit of Do not use images, transcluded templates, Lua modules, parser functions, TemplateStyles or external links in your signature. in WP:CUSTOMSIG/P. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:25, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

The actual policy is at Wikipedia:Signatures#Images.

• Excessive or large images can cause issues for users on low-performance devices or mobiles.: math tags are not excessive or large. Although symbols such as $\int$ might have an issue because it occupies too much space.
• A new image can be uploaded in place of the one you chose, making your signature a target for possible vandalism: does not apply to math tags.
• They make pages more difficult to read and scan: not necessarily for math tags.
• They make it more difficult to copy text from a page: this is partially true. Math tags do copy and it turns into the LaTeX source form.
• They are potentially distracting from the actual content: math tags do not have color, so not really distracting.
• Images do not scale with the text, making the lines with images higher than those without them: math tags do scale with the text.
• They clutter up the "file links" list on the respective image's page every time one signs on a different talk page: no.
• Images in signatures give undue prominence to a given user's contribution: not really.

0xDeadbeef 06:55, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

The sentence that I quoted isn't solely about images. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:46, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh right, it is a parser function. However, I think this, for math tags specifically, should be discussed.. 0xDeadbeef 23:56, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

You could use the corresponding Unicode characters instead. isaacl (talk) 01:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, you can do it with

→ ∞

which makes → ∞ - that would be perfectly acceptable, nobody's ever complained about the 🌹 in my sig. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:04, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

WP:SIGLINK and requiring a link to the user page (even if it doesn't exist)

On the Wikipedia app, if a user has their signature set to just their talk page, there's no way that I'm seeing to get to that users contribs without opening up a browser and bypassing the app. Is this something that would be addressed through a policy change to require a link to the user page, or would this be better addressed as a bug report for the app? —Locke Cole • t • c 00:46, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Date and timestamp

At WP:CUSTOMSIG/P one of the things it says is "Always keep the time/date-stamp: these are used by bots to determine when a discussion is eligible to be archived." however I Don't believe there's a way to remove the time/date-stamp without removing it afterwards. Is there a reason this is here or is this simply a relic from when editing the date/time-stamp was possible? ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf: I also think it's a relic from the past. On an unrelated note, there was a user whose timestamp in the signature used to be wikilinked to their user or talkpage. I think it was Lourdes, but I can't be sure. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:22, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that it refers to a three-tilde signature. It is possible to use this feature to customise the timestamp, see this post (from nearly nine years ago), but is almost certain to defeat certain bots and scripts that are designed to parse the timestamp as if it is in the standard format. Even omitting the five characters "(UTC)" can screw some of them, including Legobot. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I often use five tildes to produce a timestamp, it excludes the username. —usernamekiran (talk) 22:55, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Someone might be signing manually (perhaps if signing a comment after having forgotten originally). isaacl (talk) 23:07, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Is my signature allowed

It has a tongue in cheek citation in it, but I'm not familiar with rules not about having your name and timestamp visible in the signature Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 16:10, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Please do not do this. It would create stray, unexplained references at the bottom of every discussion page that you posted to. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, I would consider this signature disruptive. Thank you for asking about it, but please change it to something that does not us ref tags. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:43, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Feedback needed re procedure leaving sig for a different user than the one performing the edit

A training tool within the framework of Wikipedia:Education creates discussions on Talk pages on behalf of student editors, and publishes a comment on the TP with a sig that is not the userid of the editor running the tool. There is a question as to whether this is compliant with the guideline, in particular, the policy section at § Signature forgery. Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)