Wikipedia talk:Signatures should not contain images

Some older remarks on a proposal to forbid color in signatures can be found here.

Copied from WP:ANI
Now that the devs have implemented code that forces a correct signature, it would be possible to also ask them to forbid certain tags in signatures - in particular, images. What do people think about allowing images in signatures? (other possibilities include the 'big' tag and line breaks, since they're rather annoying) Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 17:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, yes, and yes. a ndroid 79  17:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Small images are ok, I think. But there should be limits on size - some people really don't know when to stop. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think they should be discouraged in the same way that template transclusion is. They always seem to slow down page loading for me. --Bob Mellish 17:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I would be thrilled to death to get rid of all three (images, the 'big' tag, and line breaks). There's no good reason for any of them.  Images in particular suck up valuable resources, particularly since the image server has been slow of late. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Images are fine. Let's get our servers up to snuff instead. Kim Bruning 18:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Two thoughts&mdash;how do images in signatures help us to build an encyclopedia, and where are we planning to get these new and improved servers from? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:50, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Get some sleep and look at that comment in the morning. silsor 03:55, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Images (and long sigs in general) are the tools of Satan. Well maybe not but they are serve absolutely no purpose, the only thing they can do is slow down servers and make the editing page unreadable. Martin 18:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I generally tend to dislike technical solutions that limit user creativity and self-expression. Unless the devs say sig images are consuming a significant amount of resources, I would be opposed to eliminating them.  The "big" tag is fairly harmless and frequently identifies user who feel so insecure or so self-important that they need a large sig.  Frankly, I think having that information more than makes up for any annoyance that it causes.  I can't recall ever having noticed a line break in a sig, so I don't know how I feel about that.  Generally though, if you really feel someone's sig is a problem, I think it is better to talk to people about their flamboyant behavior than simply outlaw all sigs of X type.  Dragons flight 18:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I have at least once seen a sig that crashed my browser because of the image - entirely accidentally, as far as I can tell. I understand the desire for user creativity and self-expression, but Wikipedia is not a message board - it's a serious project. Go self-express on LiveJournal. Phil Sandifer 18:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * What about a middle route? Don't ban anything (for now), but let those who are concerned by sigs go somewhere and develop some kind of good-practice guidelines (WP:SIGS?). This would at least flag up to new users the types of signs that are considered poor form by some users, what their concerns might be, technical considerations, and some 'good practice' examples. People with problamatic sigs could be pointed towards it, avoiding long explainations on case by case basis, and without instruction creep. --Doc ask? 18:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Serious project indeed. --cesarb 18:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Indeed. We only have around 50 pages of self-indulgent joking. That's pretty serious, all things considered. Phil Sandifer 18:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I would support this. There are plenty of ways to be creative with colour tags and Unicode symbols. Both because of performance reasons, and because of the potential of annoyance (most are unproblematic, but recently nationalist trolls found that they could get each other's goat by including flags in their sigs). But it is not the most urgent of problems in my book. Usually, it should be enough if several people tell someone their sig is considered annoying (doesn't hold for trolls of course). dab (&#5839;) 19:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If we were going to have rules for banning certain things in sigs, we'd have to agree on the rules first. Guidelines (WP:SIG?) are a first step that will be useful whether we go to banning or not. Rd232 talk 22:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't particularly care about images in sigs at the moment, but what really grinds my gears are sigs that use stupid amounts of wiki syntax or HTML to achieve whatever look they're going for. It's awful to navigate around these chunks of feces when trying to edit a talk page. silsor 00:11, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

New Discussion
Images should not be prohibited, but restricted instead. Make them the same size or smaller than the surrounding text so they don't disrupt its flow. That said,the <-big-> tag and line breaks should be prohibited, they don't add any creative elements, and are annoying and ugly. Tito xd (?!?) 23:45, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * That's the only problem I've ever had with them, when they take up more than one line, it disrupts the other text on that and surrounding lines. All I'd suggest is the restriction Titoxd talked about. Rx StrangeLove 01:54, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I would agree with that. (Not too surprisingly, perhaps.) [[Image:European-Austrian flag hybrid.svg|20px]] ᓇᐃᑦᔅᑕᓕᐅᓐ ✉ 13:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

My sig
I know this isn't really related to this issue, but I was wondering if anyone could help me with my signature. I want it in all black, except for the green esperanza e, but don't want it to be too big with extra font tags. I want the m to link to Wikimania 2006, the e to link to ESP (in green), the u to link to my userpage, the t to my talk, and that's all. Which brings up another issue I have; MediaWiki's auto linking, which makes the text after the link part of the link, which is kinda annoying. Text is automatically black, so I thought I would be fine, but nooooo. If anyone can help me with this (or if anyone knows how to handle monobook skins), I'd really appreciate it if they dropped me a line at my talk page. Thanks, Mys  e  ku  rity  05:15, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

they are said to cause server slowdown
Well, do they or not?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:45, 20 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Indeed. I've been wondering the same thing, and no-one seems to be able to tell. The same goes for use of stub icons. -- Ec5618 21:47, 21 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Has noone got any statistics about this? Urban legend, or what's the reason? [[Image:European-Austrian flag hybrid.svg|20px]] ᓇᐃᑦᔅᑕᓕᐅᓐ ✉ 13:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * They do, and it's worse if the image is actually a larger image that the server has to scale down for you. The reason, quite simply, is that a signature containing a line of text is about 60-80 bytes in length, and a very small image is at least a hundred times larger than that. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 22:29, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * It makes perfect sense to assume that they do drain some resources. Not only are they relatively large, but they have to be reduced in size (atleast once), and they have to be requested and transmitted to the user. Logically, bandwidth, storage and CPU power should be conserved. The only real question seem to be: is it worth the trouble? It seems no hard data exists. If removing the images (forcibly) would free up an immeasurable amount of resources, is it worth the hassle?
 * Until someone manages to generate some data, the best we can do is politely ask users to please remove the images from their signature voluntarily. Arguably, the images serve no purpose, and may cost valuable resources, so I see no good reason for individuals to use them.
 * So, ᓇᐃᑦᔅᑕᓕᐅᓐ, what say you? Please? -- Ec5618 23:18, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * sighs Whatever. I'll remove it for now out of goodwill. Should it turn out, however, that the server load is neglibile, I'll be the first user to add a flag to his signature again.
 * I still request a developer voice his assessment of the situation after the change that took place in this summer. &mdash; Nightstallion (?) 07:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I've been trying to get in touch with one. But 'tis the season to be unreachable. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 10:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Suggest deletion: Covered under WP:SIG
Pretty much everything that's said here is said at Sign your posts on talk pages under "Things to avoid". Is there any reason for keeping this guideline at all? Stevage 11:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)