Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-4984687-20150326040341/@comment-4984687-20150326090856

SuperSajuuk wrote: Frankly, in my opinion, the signature policy is not a policy, it is just a copy/paste job from the signature help page.

Nothing on that policy resembles anything about how signatures should be displayed and what formatting restrictions are placed on them, especially as the template method outlined is not recommended (I looked at your Wikipedia profile (sorry!) and saw they moved your signature out of the template namespace :P), since Wikia signatures are global, so what's the use in having a signature in the template namespace when it won't actually work? :D

You are correct that the userspace is the most recommended place to have a signature, because they are -- in a sense -- a sandbox. If it's in the template namespace, your signature is liable to be edited by any random user who sees it, which they would be allowed to do so.

In regards to the signature template, we could run a bot to substitute any uses of it on pages and slowly take it away. I'm not sure why the person who created it thought it was a good idea, but they were clearly mistaken about how Wikia user preferences work. :D

My proposal for a new policy is something like what has been used over on the Narutopedia. It's a simple policy that is very clear about what should be permitted in a signature. IMO, a signature should not be something flashy, it is to identify you on a talkpage and a lot of people here use obfuscated nicknames, which helps nobody whatsoever. Obviously some aspects would need to be changed, like some wiki name references, but it's a pretty basic policy that can be used anywhere. Click here to read their policy. When I first joined I was unaware signatures needed to be placed after messages, Deyvid corrected me on it. I think noting that in the policy should be implemented for future reference.

For being correct on the namespace part, if you recall, you recommended it to me.

I don't know if a bot would work. The reason I left the current templates untouched was because people still use them, and to move their signatures would require us editing their personal user preferences which front what I know isn't possible on the local wiki level. A lot of users use to use signatures in the template space but began to move it to their userspaces recently. I've seen it on a lot of other wikis too oddly.

From the Naruto wiki policy I can see what should be added. I find it a little too strict, so I'll just list everything I think should also be implemented:


 * Link to userspace and/or talkpage
 * Images sized at 20 pixels maximum
 * Default timestamp
 * Line-breaks