The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was withdrawn. I'm withdrawing this MFD, because the specific cases that it was brought for have been voluntarily deleted, and the lists at User:Xenocidic/sandbox/s1 s2 and s3 need massaging. Furthermore, a preventative technical measure to prevent subst from being used in the signature preferences box (discussed at WP:VPP) may be simpler. It seems clear, however, that the general consensus is to disallow signatures more than 255 characters. –xenocidic (talk) 23:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User subpages used to subvert Mediawiki limit on signatures[edit]

Per the guideline at WP:Signature#Length, signatures should be kept short, not taking up "more than two or three lines in the edit window". Mediawiki truncates custom signatures to 255 characters. Also per Wikipedia:Signature#Transclusion_of_templates, transclusion of signatures are forbidden. While these signatures are being subst'ed, they may still be targets for surreptitious vandalism. This MFD covers all such signature subpages, and specifically User:American_Eagle/sig (363 characters) and User:Ezekiel_of_Howdypedia/Sig (449 characters) (both deleted on request per db-u1 - MFD still covers other such pages). –xenocidic (talk) 16:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

America †alk 17:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now that your signature is less than 255 characters, you can paste it directly into the preferences as a raw signature. Substing the signature still places an unnecessary strain on the servers. Finally, please refrain from personal attacks. –xenocidic (talk) 17:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
American Eagle, it's called Wikipedia policy, something that all users abide by. D.M.N. (talk) 17:49, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
None of you told me, you just warned me for telling another user that he can do it to fix his signature (I thought you could) and then nominated my page for deletion. Nobody told me it was too long or that I should shorten it - nobody cared. It wasn't a personal attack. It was just a response that I would have changed it had somebody told me it was too long. The signature doesn't work in the box, it says, "Invalid raw signature; check HTML tags." Sorry for getting upset, but one of you should have told me. --

America †alk 18:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I side with my friend American Eagle on this one. It's kind of stupid when you think of it. Oh well I guess there's nothing I can do. You can verify my signature now and delete the other page if you want. I wont need it. Sorry about all the trouble guys.--Ezekiel †alk 18:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Apology accepted, and sorry for not talking to you ahead of time (though the guideline is outlined in WP:SIG#Length which I reference on EOH's talk page). I've repaired the HTML in your sig (you were missing a closing </span> tag), try now. –xenocidic (talk) 18:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I already tried to convince EOH to shorten his sig here. –xenocidic (talk) 18:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes you just can't turn down a friends advice. Especially when they know 10 times more about Wikipedia than I do.--Ezekiel †alk

No problem. Thank you for understanding and please paste the signature into your preferences. ( I repaired your HTML ). Feel free to squeeze as much as you can into the 255 characters provided. –xenocidic (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that's only one reason for prohibiting transclusion. There are other reasons for limiting the length, explained at WP:SIG#Length. –xenocidic (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for fixing it. But I had really thought you could have a subpage and do that, I thought I was helping him. You may delete the page, I don't need it. Cheers --—Preceding unsigned comment added by American Eagle (talk • contribs) 14:33, June 23, 2008
Well I guess that settles that. Thanks for fixing my HTML too. If theres any more problems or you just want to talk to me you can contact me easily.--Ezekiel †alk 18:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey you guys can argue but leave me and American Eagle out of it. We've had enough of this for one day. Of course I guess it is a little true, but I can't take sides on this I'll see you guys around.--Ezekiel †alk 18:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Per your U1 request, I deleted your signature subpage and struck it from the nomination, this MFD will continue so as to determine community consensus, however you do not have to participate further. –xenocidic (talk) 18:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow that was quick it only took 10 seconds for you to delete it. Thank you though for doing so and AE has yet to recommend his but he'll get around to it. Good Night to ya's all and God Bless yas-John Lennon.--Ezekiel †alk 18:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't delete my subpage yet, I'm still working on shortening it. So far I have it down to about 361.— DædαlusT@lk / ImproveContribs 19:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry, we'll let the MFD run. Suggestion: It's highly unlikely someone would feel the need to email you straight from a comment. If they want to send you an email they can drop by your page and click "Email user". Suggestion #2, you can use user page redirects to shorten some stuff. –xenocidic (talk) 19:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So far I have it down to 284 characters.— Dædαlus ImproveContribs 20:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any ideas?— Dædαlus ImproveContribs 20:27, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This will get you down to 259 - '''[[User:Daedalus969|<span style="color:green;">Dæ</span>]][[User:Daedalus969/T|dαlus]]<small><sub> [[User:Daedalus969/RR|Improve]]</sub><span style="position:relative;left:-33px;">[[User:/Daedalus969/C|<sup style="color:green;">Contribs</sup>]]</small></span>'''. You'll need to add the "dash" manually. –xenocidic (talk) 20:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I managed to shorten it, be sure to delete my User:Daedalus969/Sig.js page now. Besides that, add what dash manually?— Dædαlus Contribs /Improve 21:00, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The dash at the very beginning. Just tag the sig.js with u1 if you don't mind =). –xenocidic (talk) 20:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know if that will work, WP counts it as a Javascript page, so it appears as code.— Dædαlus Contribs /Improve 21:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It still kosherfy's it. ;> –xenocidic (talk) 21:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yikes, should I fire up AWB and MFD-warn all those people? –xenocidic (talk) 21:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That would be very bad faith, as some of the quick random sample I just did are within limits (1, 2, 3), empty (1), or obviously not signatures at all (1, 2). — xaosflux Talk 02:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hrm, that's not quite what I meant in my VPP notice, just that a future MFD for a similar such subpage may point to this one as precedent. I see this as somewhat similar to the recent MFD on "secret pages". –xenocidic (talk) 02:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Establishing a precedent case is fine, but this nomination specifically states "This MFD covers all such signature subpages", and such a closing is typically beyond the scope of MFD. — xaosflux Talk 02:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What about limiting the scope to signatures included in Z-man's link, or is that still too wide a scope? –xenocidic (talk) 02:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note my note above, that list is not 100% accurate. — xaosflux Talk 02:45, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then, I suppose this particular MFD can be closed until a more accurate list is compiled. –xenocidic (talk) 03:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Basically at this point it's a consensus building exercise to determine if sigs over 255 characters are permitted. Though since the two specific cases that were brought have been voluntarily deleted, it can probably be closed until that list of over 1000 pages can be trimmed to pages that include only sigs that are indeed over 255 characters. –xenocidic (talk) 14:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: For the benefit of those who care, I have added the byte counts of each page to the list. Yes, the numbers are self-updating. — CharlotteWebb 15:08, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Will it takes some time to update or something? Many are shown as 0 bytes that have signatures in them. I suppose we can discard anything over 500 bytes as that is probably a guestbook, and anything under 255 as that is within paramaters (though it could just be pasted into prefs). –xenocidic (talk) 15:18, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It stopped showing pagesize after #500, will have to break up the list. –xenocidic (talk) 15:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh shit, transclusion limit (same function used too many times on the page). Try splitting onto separate pages at the first line which says zero but obviously isn't. — CharlotteWebb 15:29, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Doing.... –xenocidic (talk) 15:31, 24 June 2008 (UTC) Split into User:Xenocidic/sandbox/s1, s2, s3. Feel free to use User:Xenocidic/sandbox to create the template you mentioned and do the permutations. I'm not good enough with AWB (or whatever you used to process the page originally). Anything over 750 is probably not a sig. –xenocidic (talk) 15:34, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking back on this though, it might still not be appropriate to mass-MFD these unless we know the user is subst'ing them. Might be easier to submit a request to disallow ((subst'ing)) in the signature preferences! –xenocidic (talk) 15:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
# \[\[User:(.*?)/sig(ma|nificant|gnbook|gnhere| owner|ns)(.*?)\)

The ' owner' bit was for a couple of userboxen relating to guns. There are probably one or two left, but this should've caught most of them. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 16:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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