Talk:Community Wishlist/W288

Prickly question ;)

@Cactusisme thanks for this wish. I like the idea of a global signature, and it seems that this wish had resonance in 2019. From your POV, why do you think this hasn't been done so far? Are there any data to support that a large percentage of users engage with multiple projects and/or create a custom signature? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 21:29, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't really know. I have not been part of the previous one in 2019. 50% of the editors I see have custom signatures; I don't really know where to find the data. Cactus🌵 ^{spiky ouch} 08:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

maybe because people at that time thought it would be hard to make. Cactus🌵 ^{spiky ouch} 10:10, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

This is really hard Cactus🌵 ^{spiky ouch} 10:18, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Most people don't edit many wikis

• Most people don't edit many wikis.
• Signature modification is not necessary or even desired.
• The people who do edit many wikis, like the people who have 'supported' have one main wiki where they make many edits, and then a bunch of wikis where they made between 1 and 10 edits, mostly in mainspace.

Polygnotus (talk) 01:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Opposes

Copied from Community Wishlist/W288/Votes MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

We obviously need to do something about this, but in short: You must use the "Support" button to interact with the Votes page. Subsequent votes will wipe out any comments that are not using the vote parser function. We can consider allowing oppose votes, but until then, we ask you keep them and other discussion on the discussion page. Thanks and apologies for the confusion. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose Custom signature was a mistake. Nardog (talk) 09:59, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Could you briefly give any reason as to why? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:47, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Because allowing users to mass-add arbitrary wikitext is a perpetual nightmare. Many haven't gotten their signatures rid of ‎<font>...‎</font> and the fact we have to politely ask them in the first place says it all. Nardog (talk) 13:57, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose 1. Talk page user signatures and this in specific are unimportant – there is no need or big benefit here 2. Often different user signatures can be confusing and make things unclear or give people unfair advantages etc – standardization and expectable things are useful. I don't really oppose custom signatures but they have disadvantages. 3. This facilitates user signatures in languages that aren't in the language of the specific WP such as English signatures in Spanish Wikipedia instead of the user being facilitated to set up the signature project/language-specific. --Prototyperspective (talk) 18:41, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective We are opposing on the talkpage, yet the supporters are on the other page??? Why? Also they haven't provided any reasoning, is that a limitation of the system? This community wishlist thing is weird. Do you know? Polygnotus (talk) 22:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

The edit summary had some explanation for why. I made a thread about this on the Wishlist talk page about all this. Support votes can give reasoning and I think the votes are much stronger and more valuable if they do; they don't have to and I don't know why the 3 users decided not to explain why. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:07, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose Yeah I think custom signatures are unnecessary, often ugly and distracting, they don't help us achieve our goal, people create all kinds of linter errors, it makes writing scripts difficult, and I think there is a lot of overhead associated with custom signatures (e.g. explaining stuff to new users and dealing with errors). Polygnotus (talk) 22:45, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose I use dark mode and I've seen enough editors wrap their signature with <span style="color: black;"> or something just as unreadable that I just wish custom signatures went away completely. Making it easier for people to use completely unreadable signatures cross-wiki is a huge step backwards for accessibility. Warudo (talk) 20:40, 7 February 2026 (UTC)