Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Sign your comments 2008-01-18

This page is a suspended policy proposal. It has been superseded by a list of common wiki practices. The Guild Wars 2 Wiki has no policies. All former proposals are kept for historical preservation.

This guideline outlines how a user might customise their signature without being perceived as overly disruptive and end up slapped about by the seeming open nature of the actual signature policy.

Signatures revisited

Signatures are an important part of everyday wiki discussions. They are a means of identifying who said what and customisation can help users do this quickly. However, a signature should punctuate the users contribution rather than dominate it. In customising their signature a user should be aware of the impact of their signature on text flow and how much attention it draws away from their contribution and the contribution of others.

Determining the disruptiveness of a signature is, by its nature, a subjective task which is best left to sysop discretion unless the problem is glaring. There is no well defined line which a user can cross to have a disruptive signature or not. This guideline should not be used to imply that there is.

Sign as yourself

Your sign should at least contain your user name and a link out to one of your primary user pages.

If you sign with an abbreviation of your user name you should register that name too and redirect it to your full name. This'll stop your short user name from being taken which will force you to change back to your full name. It'll also stop other wiki users from getting confused. Generally, we'd prefer you short name be related to your actual user name.

If you use an image to include your user name, use an alt tag with your user name in it. For example, [[Image:User <user name> sig.png|<user name>]].

Appearance and color

Generally you want to keep a customised signature within the line height of the default wiki style sheet to it doesn't mess with surrounding lines. This means that any image or text you have in your signature should be around 19px high.

You will be required to change your signature if you have:

• Flashing or moving components.
• Line breaks.
• Text which is too big.
• Text which is difficult to read; either by being too small or use of obscuring fonts.
• Colors which are difficult to read especially for color blind users.
• Very long html code for the signature.
• Very long visual appearance.

You may also be requested to change your signature if it uses:

• A background color as well as an image, or an image with a background.
• A background or image which draws excess attention to your signature.
• Too many colors, especially in a rainbow effect.
• Subscript or superscript text.

If tastefully done any of the visual effects in the above section can be used in a signature, but what is finally allowed is determined by sysops.