Wikipedia:Don't use a billboard signature: Difference between revisions

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Latest revision as of 01:52, 10 July 2025

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{{Redirect|WP:BILLBOARD|Wikipedia use of Billboard music charts|WP:BILLBOARDCHARTS}}

{{under construction}}

{{behavioral essay|WP:BILLBOARD|WP:HIGHLIGHTSIG}}

{{nutshell|Discussion pages are about discussion. Do not highlight your signature to draw attention away from discussion to focus on your name.}}

It is standard practice on Wikipedia to sign talk page comments, adding information about who wrote it and when it was written. Registered users can customize their signatures through their preferences, affecting how their signatures appear to other users. Some users change their signatures for functional reasons, and others customize it for stylistic reasons, as a means of expression. Signatures should not, however, distract from the discussion itself. A signature is not a [[billboard]] to draw everyone's attention to the styling of your username. Using a big, bright signature can be viewed as annoying when a single user's name becomes the most prominent part of what should be a community discussion. Some elements, like color, and especially text highlighting, can also affect some people's concentration and ability to focus on the important part of the discussion (i.e. everything other than the style of your signature).

A signature should not, however, distract from the discussion itself. When you use text highlighting or other CSS to turn your username into a [[billboard]], you pull editors' concentration away from the substance of the talk page to instead focus on your name. A better place to use extensive highlighting, colors, and other styles is on your userpage to which your signature links, not every instance of your signature.

==What the guideline says==

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{{quote|Your signature must not blink, scroll, or otherwise cause inconvenience to or annoy other editors.}}

The guideline says to avoid enlarging the text, adding line breaks or horizontal rules, to use subscribesubscript and superscript sparingly, to ensure it's big enough to read, and to use color sparingly.

One reason to use color sparingly is for accessibility reasons. Using different colors in your signature can affect some people's ability to read it if the contrast between the text and background is not sufficiently high.

Using a billboard signature inconveniences and annoys other editors, but is not directly related to accessibility, and the guideline does not specifically address text highlighting.

==Avoid text highlighting==

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==What to do if you see a billboard signature==

In practice, Wikipedia's guidelines about signatures are enforced inconsistently, and the community has shown reluctance to codify additional specific restrictions. Therefore it is not sufficient to simply link to the guideline and demand someone change their signature. Ask politely, and explain that it is distracting. Remember that although the effect of a signature billboard signature is distraction from discussion and undue focus on the signature itself, users often do not design a signature for this reason. Signatures are a means of personal expression, and a user with a distracting signature probably does not realize that it negatively affects other people's ability to engage with or focus on discussions in talk pages.

==Seeing your own signature==

Some people use a nonstandard signature to facilitate finding their own posts on a page. For this, there are ways to highlight your own posts so that only you see the highlighting. One script which makes this easy is [[User:PleaseStand/Comment highlighter|PleaseStand's comment highlighter]].

==Examples of billboard signatures==

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{{div col begin}}

<fontspan facestyle="font-family:comic sans ms;">[[User:Example|<span style="background: #23238E; color: #FFFF00;">'''Example Username'''</span>]]<small>[[User talk:Example|<span style="background: #23238E; color: #FFFF00; ">(Hi!)</span>]]</small></fontspan>

[[User:Example|<span style="border: 1px solid gray;background:black;padding:2px;color:white; 0.2em 0.2em 0.3em">&nbsp;'''''exampleusername'''''&nbsp;</span>]][[User talk:Example|<span style="border: 1px solid gray;background:white;padding:2px;color:black; 0.2em 0.2em 0.3em">&nbsp;'''''talk'''''&nbsp;</span>]].

[[User:Example|<fontspan colorstyle="background: black; color:#33ff00"; face="font-family:Courier New" style="background: black;">Example</fontspan>]][[Special:Contributions/Example|<fontb colorstyle="color:red"; face="font-family:Courier New"; style="background: black;"><b>X</b></font>]][[User_talkUser talk:Example|<fontspan colorstyle="color:#33ff00"; font-family: face="Courier New"; style="background: black;">Username</fontspan>]]

[[User:Example|'''<span style="background:blue;color:white;border: 1px solid blue">&nbsp;Example</span>''']][[User talk:Example|<span style="background:red;color:white;border: 1px solid blue">'''Username'''&nbsp;</span>]]

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[[User_talk:Example|<span style="color:black;">'''E^x'''—</span><span style="background:black;color:white;padding:0px 5px 6px 0px;cursor:pointer;cursor:hand;letter-spacing:2px;">—_ample'''U'''_sername</span>]]

<span style="border:1px solid #000000;">[[User:Example|<fontb style="color:#708090;background:#000000;">'''Example</fontb><fontb style="color:#000000;background:#708090;">Username'''</fontb>]]</span>

'''[[User:Example|<span style="background:black;color:red">E x a m p l e </span>]][[User talk:Example|<span style="background:black;color:red">U s e r n a m e </span>]][[Special:Contributions/Example|<span style="background:black;color:red">20 10 70 </span>]]'''

'''[[User:Example|<span style="background:#009;color:#7FFF00">Exam</span><span style="background:cyan;color:#009">ple</span>]][[User talk:Example|<span style="background:orange;color:navy blue">Username</span>]]'''

<fontspan style="background:black; color:yellow;">[[User:Example|Exam]]</fontspan><fontspan style="background:red; color:green;">[[User:Example|ple]]</fontspan><fontspan style="background:black; color:white;">[[User Talk:Example|Username]]</fontspan>

<fontspan style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">[[User:Example|<span style="background:#669900;color:#fff;padding:0 4px">Example</span>]][[User talk:Example|<span style="background:#99CC66;padding:0 4px;color:#fff;">Username</span>]]</fontspan>.

[[User:Example|<span style="color:#000000;background:#CC0000">'''Ξxample'''</span>]][[User_talk:Example|<span style="color:#CC0000;background:#000000">'''Username'''</span>]]

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<span style="text-shadow: 4px 4px 15px #0099FF, -4px -4px 15px #99FF00;">[[User:Example|ExampleUsername]]</span> ● <span style="text-shadow: 4px 4px 15px #FF9900, -4px -4px 15px #FF0099;">[[User_talk:Example|📧]] [[Special:Contributions/Example|🔍]]</span>

<span style="background-color:red;">[[User:Example|ExampleUsername]] <span style="color:white;">&#124;</span> [[User Talk:Example|TALK]] <span style="color:white;">U<span style="color:#DDDDDD;">S<span style="color:#BBBBBB;">E<span style="color:#999999;">R<span style="color:#777777;">!!</span></span></span></span></span></span>

<div style="border:dashed red 5px; margin: 1px; width:12em; background: red;">

{| cellspacing="0" style="background: red;"

| colspan="2" align="center" style="vertical-align: center; font-size: 8pt; padding: 5; line-height: 1.25em; color: lightgreen; background: red" | [[User:Example|ExampleUsername]] <font color="#FFFFFF"><font color="#FFFFFF">{{!}}</font></font> [[User Talk:Example|TALK]] <font color="#FFFFFF">U<font color="#DDDDDD">S<font color="#BBBBBB">E<font color="#999999">R<font color="#777777"></font></font></font></font>!!</font>

|} </div>

[[User:Example|<span style="color:white;background:MediumVioletRed;border-style: single">.oOo.ExampleUsername.oOo.</span>]]<small>[[User talk:Example|Example]]-[[Special:Contributions/Example|Username]]-[[User:Example|Good stuff]]</small>

<fontspan style="background:#E13A3E;">[[User:Example|'''<fontb style="color:#231F20;">ExampleUsername</fontb>''']][[User talk:Example|^{<small><fontspan style="color:#fff;">Talk</fontspan></small>}]]</fontspan>

<nowiki>:)</nowiki><fontspan style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:#FFFFCC"; font-size="2:small;">[[User:Example|<fontb facestyle="font-family:verdana"; color="Green:green;"><b>ExampleUsername is</b></font>]] [[User talk:Example|<fontb colorstyle="color:brown;"><b>here</b></font>]]</fontspan>

'''--[[User:Example|<span style="background:red; color:yellow; padding:2px;">example</span>]][[User talk:Example|<span style="background:blue; color:yellow; padding:2px;">username</span>]]'''

<span style="border: 5px solid; font-family:Trebuchet MS; padding: 0px 0px; font-size: 13px;"><span style="background: #FF0000;">[[User:Example|ExampleUsername]] ==(</span>)== [[User talk:Example|Talk to me!]]</span>

–<span style="box-shadow: 0px 0px 12px red;border-radius:9em;padding:0 2px;background:#D00">[[User:Example|<span style="color:#AFF">'''ExampleUsername'''</span>]]^{''' [[User talk:Example|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Example|contribs]]'''}</span>

{{div col end}}