Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tony Sidaway (talk | contribs) at 06:34, 1 June 2006 (→Tony Tony: Explanation of non sequitur). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Exploding Boy's Summary

Reagrding the non-Latin characters, then why aren't they removed from the actual article namespace in articles like Wang Chong, Korea, and Japanese language. Chcknwnm 02:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Because they are in almost all cases preceded by the English version or transliteration, and because a reader can expect to encounter some foreign characters in articles on certain subjects. Signatures that do not display correctly, however, can be an impediment to identifying or referring to a given user, as well as to editing talk pages and responding to posts. Exploding Boy 02:36, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

In my signature, I have Korean charcters. Without them, I can still be identified, as 'Chuck' is still there. When foreign characters don't render, they appear as blocks, and don't interfer with editing or responding that I know of. I don't think that it matters whether or not it is a foreign subject article, or a user signature, as users can be of forein heritage and/or have completely foreign names. Chcknwnm 02:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, in regards to your #1, that it was Tony's talk page and therefore more than reasonable: It is a Misplaced Pages page, not Tony's. The purpose of User talk:Tony Sidaway is for members of the Misplaced Pages community to be able to communicate with Tony. Tony is open to archiving the page, deleting comments that have been responded to, but not to alter others people's comments. Chcknwnm 03:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well the key is communication. This is better facilitated by improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the page: viz, editing the more ridiculous signatures to something less intrusive. The signatures play only one part in communication: identification of the author and the date and time of the comment. None of the other stuff plays any part in the communication, but is merely vanity on the part of the editor. When that gets in the way, of course it should be freely refactored. --Tony Sidaway 04:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Speedy delete?

Err, speedy delete? Why? Friday (talk) 04:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I put the hang on tag while I went to see what G1 was. It says, "Patent nonsense, i.e. no meaningful content, unsalvageably incoherent page. This does not include: poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, vandalism, badly translated material, implausible theories or hoaxes." I don't see that here. Maybe Tawker could explain. Thanks, Chuck 04:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Talked to Tawker. Was an honest mistake. Chuck 04:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Did Tony discuss the matter?

Did Tony try to discuss the matter with the affected people in a civil way? Andjam 04:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

At some length . . --Tony Sidaway 04:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict (thought it important to add too)) Yes, he did discuss it civily...I didn't provide diffs, but if you look at his talk at User_talk:Tony_Sidaway#Just_curious, you can see it. However, he never did consede to requests, which is the reason for the RfC. And btw: I am grearful that Tony was civil, it's hard to find sometimes with dealing with problems like this. Chcknwnm 05:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, all were civil. I am not prepared to accede to the requests that I refrain from refactoring large, obtrusive and ugly signatures where they significantly degrade the shared discussion environment, however. Indeed I believe that this practice should be adopted wiki-wide. Thus the dispute continues. --Tony Sidaway 05:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad that you have discussed things.

You said on the project page "Both primary disputants above are complaining particularly about my editing of my own discussion page. This is of course utterly absurd.". If you're going to be going beyond your own talk page (eg, this page(!)), isn't that comment a bit of a distraction? (Also, is saying "utterly absurd" helpful?).

Also, if you're going to be doing this beyond your own talk page, wouldn't a more productive approach be to suggest (on their user talk page) that they change their signature, rather than "cleaning up" every one of their signatures? Andjam 05:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, Nathan and Chuck did ask me to stop editing their signatures on my talk page. This is, as you say, a bit of a distraction. This doesn't in any way lessen its utter, blithering absurdity.

I think we've gone far beyond the stage where signatures can be cleaned up by politely asking their owners, attractive as this idea is. Nathan, for instance, last month was approached about his then-obscenely large signature, which was about 730 characters in size and contained three embedded images. He said that as the signature guideline was a mere guideline and not policy, it was quite okay if he sat back and did nothing about it. He then took it to WP:ANI and called the people who approached him bullies, and asked for one of them to be warned and the other desysopped.

It was at this point that I intervened and blocked him. He subsequently trimmed the signature, though at one point he did also launch a misconceived RfC against me.

In such circumstances, it strikes me that there is a more sensible, less intrusive way to deal with this. Talk pages are public spaces and they can always use editing to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. So the solution to the problem of the signature louts is simply to refactor the worst of the signatures. --Tony Sidaway 06:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Tony Tony

Tony, be careful. It is most likely considered bad form to remove sigs from the talk page of an RfC about removing sigs. Chuck 05:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you aware that your siganture takes up two lines even at a high resolution? (currently I'm at 1600x1200) If I go down to a more typically used resolution, it ends up being three and even four lines. Would you agree having a signature as long as your comment may be a bit much for those trying to comment on/edit talk pages after you? .:.Jareth.:. 05:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

pfft 3-4 lines? that is small compared to what mine used to be. Mine used to be 7-8 lines long. 我爱浮游生物 05:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. But do you agree that might be a stumbling block for others trying to edit? .:.Jareth.:. 05:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(after another edit conflict) Yeah, there is no set length, and if Tony is consistent, he'll change both Jareth's and ILovePlankton's. Here he is greeted with a problem. If he doesn't change those two (and Nathan's below too, now that I notice), that would be suspect of picking on certain people. If he does change it, he's providing another diff for the evidence section. To Tony: to solve the dilemma, you might want to put the sigs back on this page and just hold off while the RfC is being discussed. This reduces further problems. Chuck 05:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Avoiding your concern with Tony's behavior, can you understand why several lines of signature might be a disadvantage to other editors? Have you read the siganture guidelines you presented as an applicable policy where it discusses those disadvantages? .:.Jareth.:. 05:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Jareth do you wan't my honest opinion? If so I have never had troubles editing when some one has a long sig (I just went around it). 我爱浮游生物 05:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't generally either, but I do use a rather high resolution. The question is more about whether or not you can understand that it might be a difficulty to other editors, particularlly those who do not have the advantages of more modern equipment and higher resolutions. .:.Jareth.:. 05:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I concede. Some users may have trouble with it. 我爱浮游生物 05:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

So following that, would it also make sense that like user pages, signatures should conform to the guidelines enacted by the community? .:.Jareth.:. 05:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Not if it is only a guidline. 我爱浮游生物 06:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

You don't believe community guidelines should be followed? .:.Jareth.:. 06:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Using logical reasoning, one should assume that if there is an RfC about an aspect of one's behaviour, that one should immediately stop said behaviour while the RfC is in progress. Well, one should assume, anyway. The problem with this statement is that all people aren't logical. — Nathan 05:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Is there a wikipedia policy on chutzpah? Andjam 05:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Sign your posts on talk pages (WP:SIG) says:

"A 300 character signature, for instance, is likely to be much larger than most of the comments to which it will be appended and this is likely to make discussions harder for everybody to participate in. Both images and long signatures carry the danger of giving undue prominence to a user's contribution. Reduce it to the minimum necessary."

Well thankfully neither Nathan nor Chuck has such a long signatures as 300 characters! They're both less than 200 characters, I believe. Nevertheless they are both much longer than necessary and both rival in length, or even exceed, the quite long comments to which they are attached above (on this one occasion I have refrained from trimming the signatures so that other editors can see for themselves the obstacles this creates to easily recognising and reading comment text in the edit box).

I think it's reasonable to tidily trim a signature back to something we can all live with. I certainly don't think it's reasonable to complain about a trimmed signature in a shared editing and discussion space, as long as it doesn't prevent people recognising the username (with a link of course) of the commentator, and the date and time of the comment. All the rest is vanity, and moreover is often repeated many times on a page, mounting up to many kilobytes of noise. There should be no expectation that such noise be allowed to remain where it seriously degrades the discussion medium. --Tony Sidaway 05:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Could you please tell us what kind of noise it is, I for one only hear my keyboard. 我爱浮游生物 05:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I use the term noise in its technical sense, as in signal-to-noise ratio. In editing a discussion on a wiki, the words of the discussion here are the signal, as are the useful parts of the signature. Additional text in the signature is noise; it adds nothing to the discussion and the effect of its presence is only to make it more difficult to locate the signal, and also means that less of the discussion (as opposed to unwanted text, or noise) is displayed in the edit box. --Tony Sidaway 05:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

If my signature is less than 300 characters then (by your logic), you shouldn't have any reason to change it. It would be appreciated if you could please refrain from doing so, at least while this RfC is in progress. Thanks so much. — Nathanrdotcom 05:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

"If my signature is less than 300 characters then (by your logic), you shouldn't have any reason to change it" No, that's a non sequitur. --Tony Sidaway 06:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Please do explain. — User:nathanrdotcom 06:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes of course. I quoted a guideline giving 300 characters signature as an example of a size at which your signature would greatly dwarf nearly all comments made before it. It does not follow that I would not edit a 299 line character signature. You claim that the logic here is mine, but it isn't. It's a non sequitur introduced by you. --Tony Sidaway 06:34, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(Oh, so many edit conflicts) I appreciate your stopping the trimming (even if it is just to show how 'annoying' our sigs are). The way I see it is this: When I see someone's sig as ], I get the first impression that that person isn't unique enough to identify themselves with a specific signature. While signatures are allowed, and for the ones that don't violate the policies/guidlines, they should be allowed to stay, as an "image" of that person's character. Since I assume other people feel the same when they see a signature (that it shows who the person is), I don't want them to think that I don't have enough character to create my own signature, which is the image that is portrayed when Tony (or anybody else) changes my signature. User:Chcknwnm 05:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

This reasoning strikes me as somewhat immature. A person's uniqueness is not defined by the characters after his comments. If you want to see evidence of uniqueness, look rather at the words of his comments. --Tony Sidaway 05:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, immature or not, people reason like that (and I'm not sure they'd like to be called immature). As a side-note, why does everyone else get their sig changed to not have user and I get User:Chcknwnm. If you do change it, at least make it Chuck. (that last statement was in no way an endorsement of the changing of signatures). Chuck 06:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh don't feel bad, it's worse when he changes mine. When mine gets changed, it's Nathanrdotcom. No respect for my preference of a small n on my username (if it's to be used), and no respect for my preference that my name be displayed instead of my username. Mr. Sidaway, will you please stop changing other user's sigs (for the same reason that people change their sigs when you ask them) out of respect? Thank you very much. — Nathan 06:04, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Your Grue is likely to be eaten by Tony Sidaway

Out of curiosity, would you regard Grue's black background as signature "vanity" that wikipedia could do without? Andjam 05:51, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. It's extremely unsightly. --Tony Sidaway 06:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Where is Grue's signature, I wanna see? User:Chcknwnm (Chuck) 06:04, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

User talk:Grue seems like a good place to start. --Tony Sidaway 06:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

How is a 1 inch black rectangle extremely anything? -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 06:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

You need to ask? Actually, while it's very unsightly on the page, it's not a particularly noisy signature in the edit box. So it's not necessarily the kind of thing I'd be inclined to refactor. But it's still ugly. --Tony Sidaway 06:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(After 3 edit conflicts) His sig doesn't have images, doesn't go over 300 charters, or even 200, and doesn't expand beyond the line (on my brower at least), so I'd say nothing wrong. Definately a sig that identifies the user. User:Chcknwnm (Chuck) 06:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. And not so revoltingly ugly that it forces people to close their browser windows in horror. Just distracting, and rather ugly. --Tony Sidaway 06:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Not everything can be pretty (I learned that at the prom). My username for example, I find that very ugly (I made it when it was cool to write my name with no vowels (and no, my name is not Chicken Woman (that would be chcknwmn))). There is never a clear line on what's ugly and what's not, so changing things to fit your preference is inappropriate. Chuck 06:33, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Beating edit conflicts & Playing Devils Advocate

Hey Tony, While I don't disagree with the principle of what you quoted from WP:SIG, In playing devils advocate I have to point out that you wrote the first sentence of it. . Couldn't people construe this to be a bit of a conflict? Regards User:Charlie_Huggard 06:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I did indeed draft the words of the guideline. If they were displeasing, I'm sure they would have been removed by now, for they followed quite a long discussion and straw poll. --Tony Sidaway 06:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Outside view by Ral315

Since you haven't looked at Tony's actions, is it appropriate to comment at this RfC (you comments are welcome of course, but would be taken in better light if you were aware of the whole situation)? As for us having ugly signatures, who is to determine what is ugly? I think that it's not the 'Chuck' part that is ugly. The green 'u' adds flavor. And the korean charcters (which are actually my name in case anyone was wondering), add some artistic value. If it's the edit box that looks ugly...don't they all? I mean, infoboxes are horrendous, as are things written with <div> tags. So I think that signatures being ugly is open to too much varied opinion (which is why there are policies on the matter, so that we know what's clear-cut) User:Chcknwnm (Chuck) 06:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I offer this possible explanation for Ral315's comment: he opened the RfC, looked at the signatures in the complaint, and decided to make a comment about them. --Tony Sidaway 06:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)