Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:05:23 UTC
Hey Brion, et al: I am personally getting tired of using the {{Unsigned|User Joe}} template just to keep talk conversations straight. I have devised a solution to save users from having to sign posts manually: 1. Remove the "~~~~" style signatures from MediaWiki altogether. (to prevent duplicate signatures) 2. Upon submission of an edit, perform a check to make sure user is editing a talk page. (not an article) a. IF user is editing a talk page AND user is anonymous, AUTO-APPEND a full signature (IP Address, time, date, etc) b. IF user is editing a talk page AND user is logged-in, see step 3. 3. Add a new saved user-preference, which allows the user to choose a signature format for every talk page contribution. This signature choice will be AUTO-APPENDED to the end of every talk page submission. (Formats: i.e. Name Only, Name + Time, Name + Time + Date, "Custom") (where Custom allows the user to change colours, etc as they do today.) I believe this solution covers pretty much all of the bases, so no (or very little) functionality or personalization is lost. It also saves a few button-click/key strokes for every talk page edit. Furthermore, from an administration side of things, we always get to see who is saying which nasty things about us, without hunting... I could see it being only a teeny-tiny increase in submission time, but this won't affect read-only activities at all. Thoughts?
Several problems of the suggested solution: 1. Many replies are not done in the end of the talk page, but below the reply they want to answer to. I don't know how should MediaWiki know where to add the signature. 2. What about users who post several replies? 3. What about users who edit the talk page to organise the page, e.g. split sections, move discussions? 4. What about signatures in the Village Pump? (It's a minor problem, as such pages may be defined as talk pages.) Therefore, suggesting WONTFIX.
WONTFIXing as above. In the context of talk pages as we have them today, the suggestion doesn't make any sense because there's no context for the software. What you want would be better served by a more targetted discussion system, such as LiquidThreads which is under development.
Rotem Liss: I didn't think of those points. Very good. :) Certainly I have thoughts to hand some of them, including a checkbox which could override the auto-append. Regardles... LiquidThreads is probably what I am looking for since I think the discussion system needs a complete overhaul. I will wait for that. Thanks guys. :)