Talk:Signature block

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Networking task force.

Internet

	Internet portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Internet, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Internet on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.InternetWikipedia:WikiProject InternetTemplate:WikiProject InternetInternet articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Don't understand[edit]

" Images are often allowed as well, including dynamically updates images, such as ones generated by P2P programs."

What does this mean? --Maru (talk) Contribs 05:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the P2P part, but some sites offer signature images that update on a regular basis (eg- gametrack.org) VetteDude 20:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure whoever wrote that meant PHP 68.237.217.6 16:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC) A Passing Visitor[reply]

I think he was referring to those signatures that show your eMule statistics, for example.

NPOV?[edit]

I'll weigh in on the dynamic images: I don't know about P2P, but some forums I'm in have users who have stats from webservers as their avatar, and it updates automatically (i.e. number of users, etc - see an example, logo only) But I was originally wondering about the Forums section. It seems a little POV to me ("Those stupid teenagers...") Particularly describing teens as "posting mostly one-liner replies followed by really enormous signature blocks including blinking and scrolling text in odd fonts, and dozens of pictures of their favorite celebrities." and the part about "elaborately-constructed HTML and CSS monstrosities." Especially the former seems exaggerated, or worst-case-scenario. I have seen some bad ones, but few that are that bad. --The Human Spellchecker 21:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One forum I visit has some users with HTML signatures approaching 6 kB plus, so "elaborately-constructed HTML and CSS monstrosities" seemed applicable when I added it. :) æle ✆ 22:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First Company Law Amendment Directive as of January 2007[edit]

The change in UK company law from the beginning of 2007 will significantly tighten up corporate use of email signatures (and make them rather long in the process). The Register states:

Companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their websites and in their email footers before 1 January 2007 or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine.
Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration, and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information, which must be in legible characters, should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on "business letters" but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.

-- Ashley VH 14:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

magaly956 Magaly956$$ (talk) 21:52, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Stop with the old school already... move on.[edit]

Many can argue as a statement of fact- the vast majority of the world does not follow the guidelines described in this article.

Just about the only ones following these guidelines are from the "good ole usenet/bbs days". (or those with an email client that forces it... Thunderbird for instance.) While an argument can be made by the purists, the fact remains that the effectiveness of signature breaks has been greatly diminished. As time goes on, people are more often using html signatures. The "--" is visually ineffective as a separator. Most popular email programs do not suggest that as a separator. It's naive to think that the world will voluntarily change to this.

I know... blasphemy to some of you old school cats. Give up already! Time is *not* on your side.

--72.190.15.191 05:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "--" is visually ineffective as a separator.

It may look like "--" but it's really "-- " (dash dash space newline), and email programs that understand and properly utilize it aid the user by automatically not including the signature in the quoted section of replies. Smart, nice and little to do with visual separation.

Darkphader 21:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Darkphader is 100% correct, and it's not just "Old Schoolers" requesting the standards be adhered to. Many, many, MANY e-mail parsing scripts/scripting tools (dating back to procmail, which is still used on UNIX-based servers all over the world) look for the "-- \n" (where "\n" is the CR/LF break) to distinguish message text from signature blocks. Adherence to standards enables parsers that propagate and/or populate database updates, automatic document generators that don't yet use XML (or that use the "-- \n" as a text marker to generate XML from plaintext), and e-mail-to-messageboard translators, just to name a few, to make the appropriate section breaks and marks. For years, I worked in an organization that used the "-- \n" as a way to allow both our own text-to-HTML report generators to translate reports received from other organizations (often just textual data dumps) into easier-to-read HTML reporting, as well as providing a way for mail parsers receiving our reports to strip away the signature information that accompanied our reports being generated for both human and automated readers (no need to send the same e-mail twice if the signature break section is appropriately delineated.

And, FWIW, OperaMail (the mail tool inside the Opera browser) uses "-- \n" as its default signature block breaks, and as of 2013, Opera is in use all over the world, on multiple different platforms, and even in mobile apps. Thus, the argument that only Old Schoolers insist on the "-- \n" to delineate message text from signatures fails utterly. Scarletsmith (talk) 20:01, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup[edit]

Can we clean this up? I did some but it needs more. Most of the junk on here is not cited, and its simply what various people think signatures should be, or what they are used to on a particular forum or community they post on. The usenet/email section is woefully undercited as well.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 19:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where did all the BBS stuff go (taglines)? I thought this was a dictionary, not a commentary on the contemporary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.223.147.182 (talk) 22:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Kibo[edit]

Who is Kibo and does that reference need to be left? I can't find any info about him/her. (Photodeus (talk) 23:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC))[reply]

I'm not sure how you can mention Kibo not mention alt.fan.warlord. 71.88.105.254 (talk) 18:23, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy should be mentioned[edit]

I think that this article lacks information about controversy of the signiature blocks. As clear from the Internet and even posts above, not all of the Internet community agrees that dashed sigs make sense. In fact while browsing the Internet I have recognized that there are people who claim that they change Thunderbird for another client because they do not want the dashes to appear in the message, and there is no simple way to drop them.

I would say that some people feel a sort of "fighting passion" for having the signature dashed (even in this thread it is clear from "Give up already!") while others have the same denying passion. Since these debates exist, it is not quite objective to have the article written in a tone like the dashed sigs follow the all-accepted standard - while I do have such impression when I read the article.

Would anyone more professional than me add a block to the article denoting the existing controversy? AntiPit (talk) 04:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)AntiPit[reply]

Newline?[edit]

To my knowledge the newline after the space is not required and there are a lot of people not using it. Especially when one just puts his/her name or first name after the '-- ' string. Some e-mail clients don't even care about (while others require a newline). However, the RFC calls it a separator line, so I'd say the newline would be correct. I think this kind of Signature should be mentioned, because it very present in USENET, mailing lists, etc. I think it is possibly related to quotes written like this.

No, what you have are bullets and the hope that when your guns are empty I'm no longer standing, because if I am, you'll all be dead before you've reloaded. -- V for Vendetta, V

I do not have any reference though. Maybe someone else knows on this topic. --Athaba (talk) 14:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Controversies and sources[edit]

I agree with the earlier sentiments that this article should describe the history and current status of signatures in e-mail, Usenet news postings, and other electronic media. Per WP:NPOV, we should report all verifiable, reliably sourced, non-fringe positions. We also need to avoid original research by attributing as much of the article as possible to good sources.

IMO, this includes describing the controversies over whether or not to use the Usenet "double-hyphen-plus-space" signature separator in e-mail.

I've tried to find reliable secondary sources for this subject, but without much success. Most available material is either in Internet RFCs (arguably primary sources rather than secondary), or in various blogs, forums, and other self-published sources normally not allowed in Wikipedia. Note that primary sources are not absolutely prohibited here, but they must be used sparingly and with care. The blog/forum postings might be useful as a means of documenting the controversy over whether people do or do not want to use the Usenet standard signature separator in e-mail.

I hope to do some cleanup work on this article in the near future, but any other suggestions would of course be welcome. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 20:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Opera browser, which has its own built-in mail tool and imports/exports mail folders in mbox format, uses "-- \n" (dash-dash-space-CR/LF) as its signature block delineation. Scarletsmith (talk) 20:09, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Signature block. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:17, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Help wanted[edit]

〈pre〉...〈/pre〉 fail

Q: How can I make both of these examples scroll horizontally in a narrow mobile screen?

see example User:Mkouklis(2)/sandbox2

instead of this garb...

  |\_/|        
**************************** 
   (\_/)
 / @ @ \       *  "Purrrfectly pleasant"
  *   (='.'=)

( > º < )      *       Poppy Prinz     
   *   (")_(")

 `>>x<<´       *   (pprinz@example.com)
   *
 /  O  \      
 
****************************



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Theodore 

Ts'o				bloom-beacon!mit-

athena!tytso 308 High St., Medford, MA 

02155		ty...@athena.mit.edu 

Everybody's playing the game, but 

nobody's rules are the same!

The second one just chops off at right margin vice scrolling! --:GSMC(Chief Mike) Kouklis U.S.NAVY Ret. ⛮🇺🇸 / 🇵🇭🌴^⍨talk 16:54, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]