Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Miscellaneous/Make signature global

Random proposal ►◄ Miscellaneous The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Make signature global

Problem: After a username change all self created signatures become invalid
Who would benefit: All users who got name changed
Proposed solution: make signature global so only once the signature needs to be updated and not on all projects
More comments: another option might be to change the app/procedure used for user rename, but that might be a tad more complicated
Phabricator tickets: T188200
Proposer: Klaas `Z4␟` V: 22:05, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

A lot of signatures contain language specific portions like (talk) and thus can't be global. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 13:55, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The (talk) part can be solved by using {{int:Talkpagelinktext}} instead, just like how Wikidata does. H78c67c (talk) 02:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Better if we can't edit our sig at all. Stryn (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The user could employ exceptions in the update. --BoldLuis (talk) 17:25, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: Sorry for bothering you, but would you please explain a bit on how the usage of interface message would be "using dynamic content"? H78c67c (talk) 06:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea how all projects approach this, but at en.Wikipedia, we don't permit in sigs the use of templates, parser functions, and other code which may produce changeable content after the sig is rendered. That's for several reasons (e.g. we don't want to make templates be even more of a vandalism target by having them able to mess up millions of sigs at once), but the main one is that sigs shouldn't change. The way it appeared when originally signed at 21:20 15 October 2015 (UTC) or whenever, at a particular page, is how it should continue to appear if the comment is moved (e.g. to an archive page), or quoted whole on another page or even another wiki. It's implicit in what a signature is that it is fixed in time, "indelible". Its possible that projects with such restrictions might make an exception for something like auto-translation, if this were really desired community-wide (on the same basis that we'd already permit something like link-repair in a sig in a post copied from one wiki to another so that the links went to the right page, without altering the appearance of the sig, or permit w:en:WP:LINT cleanup to replace obsolete <font ...> markup with validating but visually equivalent <span style="...">, markup). Given the triviality of sigs (and the ease of just copying your sig from site A to site B), I don't think this is something the WMF devs should expend any resources on, absent a clear mandate from the community that we collectively wanted this more than other wishlist work in this category. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 08:00, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Comment This is a cool idea, but this is not mandatory. i'll prefer other changes, so I wont support this proposal--ValeJappo 【〒】 18:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:58, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support --NGC 54 (talk / contribs) 20:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support * Pppery * _{it has begun} 02:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support —— Eric Liu_{（留言．百科用戶頁）} 04:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Cherryblossom000 (talk) 07:18, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sohom Datta (talk) 11:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support MilkyDefer (talk) 13:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Minorax (talk) 13:14, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We don't need this at the moment. --Ján Kepler (talk) 14:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mannivu · ✉ 15:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Em-mustapha ^{User | talk} 16:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Oaktree b (talk) 16:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support — putnik 18:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support dwf² (talk) 22:58, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Darwin ^Ahoy! 02:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support but only if there is an option to retain specific sigs for different projects. JPxG (talk) 05:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. There are projects where are allowed only simple signatures without colors or fonts. And this sounds like hack for this rule. JAn Dudík (talk) 07:26, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - yona B. (D) 07:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support ··· 🌸 Rachmat04 · ☕ 10:08, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I agree that this is not necessary. --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 17:15, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support BoldLuis (talk) 17:25, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Some Wikis don't allow fantasy unicorn-colored blinking signatures, others do. This would overrule Wikis that only allow signatures that are soothing to the eye. --Gereon K. (talk) 17:45, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support of course if sig is according to strictest rules. A different one on a specific project should be allowed like with all options Klaas `Z4␟` V: 19:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Alaa :)..! 01:19, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support disable customization altogether would solve this Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 14:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Custom signatures should be prohibited in all Wikimedia projects. All users should use their username as their signature. 4nn1l2 (talk) 18:08, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support —Eihel (talk) 21:26, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
~~{{support}} only if you can retain specific sigs for different projects. PorkchopGMX (talk) 13:50, 14 December 2020 (UTC)~~[reply]
- Changing my vote to Oppose. Yes this would be nice to have, but there are too many issues that make this unfeasable. PorkchopGMX (talk) 15:44, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Michel Bakni (talk) 14:01, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Not globalizable, and the "solution" of using {{int:Talkpagelinktext}} would be against various projects' policies about using dynamic content in signatures. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 06:59, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Not worth the effort of implementation and adaptation. ◅ SebastianHelm (talk) 14:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Golmore (talk) 18:44, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose en: Effort and benefit unbalanced / de: Aufwand und Nutzen unausgewogen. --Dirk123456 (talk) 09:17, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support David1010 (talk) 13:18, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Nachtbold (talk) 15:06, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support EEMIV (talk) 15:09, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]