Last modified: 2012-08-02 13:08:30 UTC

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Bug 8458 - Limit custom signature length
Limit custom signature length
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
User preferences (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Normal enhancement with 4 votes (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
: 10177 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2007-01-02 10:50 UTC by mparke
Modified: 2012-08-02 13:08 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description mparke 2007-01-02 10:50:18 UTC
Apparently there's currently no option to limit signature length.  Could we
please add a hard cap that can be enabled to keep people from using five-line
monstrosities?
Comment 1 Quiddity 2007-01-06 02:53:38 UTC
...and 16-line (1300+ character) monstrosities as seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Sign_your_posts_on_talk_pages#Nice_Signatures

I'd like to see a 200 character limit (or even better, a 150 character limit).
The most colorful sig I can think of (that noone (except me) has complained
about) is 175 characters
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:The_Transhumanist#10_chars_shorter). 
Comment 2 Quiddity 2007-01-06 03:16:55 UTC
A (slightly controversial) alternative suggested in this thread
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Reduce_the_size_limit_for_sigs.3F)
is to remove the custom signature ability altogether, but replace with the
option to add a 'talk' link after the username in the sig. E.g.
[[User:Username]] ยท [[User talk:Userame|talk]]
Comment 3 NikoSilver 2007-01-10 11:50:23 UTC
I'd go for 250 chars which would prevent most monstrus situations, while maintaining 
the 'grey' ones for case-by-case evaluation.
Comment 4 Aryeh Gregor (not reading bugmail, please e-mail directly) 2007-01-10 18:30:10 UTC
Remember that it probably needs to be at least as long as the longest possible default 
signature.  That's about six characters plus twice the max username length plus twice the 
length of the user namespace, I believe.  Of course, de facto max username lengths might be 
shorter than whatever the maximum technical limit we have is on some projects.
Comment 5 Quiddity 2007-01-10 19:51:03 UTC
If someone has a 50 character username, they darn well better be piping it to
something shorter... (Hence even with a talkpage link, it'll end up <200 chars.)
Comment 6 Omegatron 2007-01-11 15:51:15 UTC
Also see [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Signature_length]], where we
suggested using templates for signatures (oh noes!1), while simultaneously
limiting the server damage they can cause.

If the only template allowed in signatures was {{User:Username/sig}}, the /sig
page could be made into a special page, like User:Username/monobook.css.  At the
very least, it could provide a message on editing (like the "Tip: Use the 'Show
preview' button..." message on monobook.css) encouraging short sigs and saying
to not change them all the time.

Better yet, it could be made so that you can only edit that page once a month or
something like that, or the sig templates could get an extremely low priority in
the servers, so that changes to them only propagate during times of low server
load.  So if someone changes their sig template every day, the changes will
slowly trickle out through the site only after a week or so.

This would solve the server load problem, the talk page code clutter problem,
and the "i need an oh so cool signature that changes every day to keep up with
my frequent username changes" problem at the same time.
Comment 7 Rob Church 2007-01-11 16:46:50 UTC
(In reply to comment #6)
> Better yet, it could be made so that you can only edit that page once a month or
> something like that, or the sig templates could get an extremely low priority in
> the servers, so that changes to them only propagate during times of low server
> load.  So if someone changes their sig template every day, the changes will
> slowly trickle out through the site only after a week or so.

This would require adding a lot of special-case stuff for signatures, which is
not a path we want to travel at all. Complicated signatures are not important
for the primary goal of Wikipedia, and we certainly aren't about to change
MediaWiki to give them special treatment.

A length limit seems adequate to my mind.
Comment 8 Omegatron 2007-01-17 16:28:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> This would require adding a lot of special-case stuff for signatures, which is
> not a path we want to travel at all. Complicated signatures are not important
> for the primary goal of Wikipedia, and we certainly aren't about to change
> MediaWiki to give them special treatment.

It wouldn't *just* be for long stupid signatures.  It would be for any
low-priority templates; when it would be nice to use a template, but the
template would hurt the servers if changes to it propagated immediately.  (That
*is* the main reason why templates are bad for the servers, right?  Because a
change to a widely-used template invalidates the caches of every page it is used
on?)  But there are many templates like this where it's not important that the
changes propagate instantly, and the caches could be invalidated only during
periods of low load.

> A length limit seems adequate to my mind.

:-\ Even length-limited sigs are hard to read around compared to
{{User:Username/sig}} (even with syntax highlighting).  The people discussing
length limits on the Village Pump are suggesting things like "200 characters" or
"5 lines".  Ick.

For the record, I'm not trying to claim that long stupid signatures are helpful.
 I don't use them and I don't like them.  But other people like them and are
going to use them, right up to the edge of the limits that are imposed on them.
 I want to make this situation easier for others, such as myself, to deal with.
Comment 9 Aryeh Gregor (not reading bugmail, please e-mail directly) 2007-06-06 20:58:16 UTC
*** Bug 10177 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Quiddity 2007-06-07 20:03:04 UTC
See gallery at [[User:Athaenara/Gallery]]
Comment 11 Gurch 2007-06-07 22:01:46 UTC
I think 255 characters is a reasonable limit. Anyone with a username long enough to make that a problem (it would have to be over 100 characters, for them not to be able to make the default [[User:Foo|Foo]] link to it) is likely to be blocked anyway.
Comment 12 Brion Vibber 2007-06-13 18:38:01 UTC
Added $wgMaxSigChars in r22960, defaulting to 255.
Comment 13 Helder 2012-08-02 12:49:54 UTC
This is partially broken. See bug 38974.
Comment 14 Helder 2012-08-02 13:08:30 UTC
(In reply to comment #13)
> This is partially broken. See bug 38974.

Bug 10715 it is.

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