User:Zedmelon/sigs

customized Wikipedia signatures

talk

detritus

zedmelon

contributions

welcome to zedmelon's pages

Here is a page illustrating how I've devoted far too much time to studying custom signatures in an effort to produce my own--this is exacerbated by only having scattered sporadic nibbles of time to devote.

candidates

For my new sig, I'll include some of these links (most likely from bottom up):

• detritus (d)
• random article for improvement
• email me
• my contributions (c)
• my user page (z)
• a different view of contributions
• recent changes
• a favorites/noteworthy page (zedmelon/n)
• my talk page (zedmelon)

final

Thirty-four general designs reduced to sixteen and again to seven, through over three dozen variations--most of which are still preserved below. Of those, it comes down to a handful of final contenders, each an amalgam of the ideas I like the most.

old: -- zedmelon(¿) -

new: ?¿

The box styles are prevailing as it comes down to the wire. I like all these--the character count is growing though...well beyond the limit of 255 in a few cases.

• TreasuryTag - attractive box design

518 c: zedmelon–t–n–c

• Adam the atom - interesting box, custom cursors:

636 c:  zedmelon ^TNC

625 c:  zedmelon TNC

• Ched - basic, boxed

382 c:  zedmelon  c  n 

416 c:  zedmelon  c  n 

• Tomica - shadows

559 c: zedmelon-t–n–c

• Wikipedian Penguin - I like the fonts, but it's not la creme de la creme

288 c: -- zedMELON --

312 c:  ·  zedMELON  · 

• Mandruss - I like the shadow and rounded corners

255 c:   zedmelon | talk 

semifinals

• Mandruss - shadow, rounded corners

  zedmelon | talk 

• Chairboy - The phone icon broke in some browsers, exemplifying how I shouldn't rely on non-ASCII characters.

(--)zedMELON(--) or (--)zedMELON(--)

• Wikipedian Penguin - A Linux reference, perhaps?

[ · ] zedMELON [ · ] or [--] zedMELON [--] or [-] zedMELON [-] or [ · ] zedMELON [ · ]

[--] zedMELON [--] or [-] zedMELON [-] or · zedMELON · or -- zedMELON --

• Tomica - shadows are nifty

-- zedmelon or -- zedmelon or -- zedmelon or t–n–c-zedmelon or zedmelon-t–n–c

• Ched - boxed name

 --  zed  melon  or  --  zed  melon  or  --  zedmelon  or  --  zedmelon  or  c  n  zedmelon  or  zedmelon  c  n  or  zedmelon  c  n 

• Adam the atom - cool box effect, playing with cursors:

 zedmelon TNC or zedmelonTNC or  zedmelon ^T_NC or  zedmelon ^TNC or  zedmelon TNC

 zedmelon ^TNC or  zedmelon TNC

• TreasuryTag - another cool box

zedmelon–t–n–c or zedmelon–t–n–c or zedmelon–t–n–c or zedmelon–t–n–c

demoted

Designs fell to this list as they lost favor.

• Ched - I like this one but had to abandon it as too distractive.

 zedmelon 

• Ttonyb - shadow, revisited

zedmelon

• Chickenmonkey - borderless box, reciprocating colors

 -- zedmelon 

• Becritical - good look but too distractive.

--Z^ed——_melon or --Z^ed——_melon

• Redrose64

(--)zedmelon

• JMiall - dashed box was a nice idea

zedmelon₰

• Horse Punch Kid - cursors

zedmelon

• Gfoley4 - Bummer this didn't translate well. I don't generally capitalize zedmelon, and this distinctive signature's aesthetics required caps more than I'd realized. As I didn't care for the underlined single word, my rendition of this solid signature--albeit classy in understatement--is uninspiring. How ironic that the sig which singlehandedly rekindled my interest in customizing my own missed the mark so widely.

-- zedmelon --

• Piotrus - After incorporating color, this duplicates Ched.

_{--   zedmelon}  

I like the look of Chairboy more with the monospace font. I may borrow Tomica's shadow (possibly on just one letter). Redrose exceeded expectations--fortuitous since I nearly omitted it from the short list. Ched's ribbon is too flashy, but I still like it.

expository ad infinitum

Presenting custom signatures from Zed Sig Search 2012. My final sig derives from these and my own ideas. After noting in particular one similar to Chickenmonkey I'm finally making my own a touch more distinctive as well.

I coalesced and duplicated a signature collection which I've and subsequently culled and narrowed here. Many far too gaudy for my taste, they offered good ideas--naturally, this is met with a wide variety of opinions. I'm on the more lenient side; I appreciate the creativity in naming one's talk page something like "walkie talkie" or "drop me a line". However some are a tad esoteric, such as "naggin' again?" and even "recycle kids!"

While it might be argued that the similarities to vanity license plates render the concept incompatible with the spirit of Wikipedia and the anonymity the editors are expected to assume with respect to their contributions to articles, I like the distinctive aesthetics--as well as the ease of finding a specific user or comment in a lengthy discussion. Further, I see no reason to begrudge a dedicated author for wanting a bit of recognition for hours of background work in talk pages and elsewhere--though this might again strike some as an oxymoronic perspective. As long as the style isn't incredibly disruptive I think it's great.

This began after I noticed —GFOLEY FOUR!, who gets credit for catching enough of my attention to resurrect and readdress this curiosity.

I've altered my plan to delete this page when I've settled upon a design; it may prove to be a useful reference.

• Mandruss - I like the shadow and rounded corners

  Mandruss |talk 

• Gfoley4 - green & orange professional fonts

—GFOLEY FOUR!—

• Chickenmonkey - monochrome orange/black box, no border

 Chickenmonkey 

• Ronhjones - yellow box, black border, green font, red initial

 Ronhjones  ^(Talk)

• Shirtwaist - Bicolored name, with a telephone icon (same as Chairboy) linking talk page.

Shirtwaist ☎

• JarlaxleArtemis - a nice, clean, black/yellow look.

→ JarlaxleArtemis

• Chairboy - Reminiscent of Copperplate Gothic, same phone icon as Shirtwaist--though directly pasted in lieu of HTML code. The day I compiled this I was on Win7/Internet Explorer lacking that character, so I saw a square.

CHAIRBOY (☎)

• RoyBoy - Simple bold 2nd half, superscript link to his "800 club," which aims to minimize horizontal scroll bars.

RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰

• Stollery - Interesting use of superscript and subscript for talk and contributions pages, plus a link to a nonexistent "Esperanza" page.

Glen ^T_C (Stollery)

• Funky Monkey - All-white text on a box, half burnt orange and half pink.

 Funky Monkey  (talk) 

• Monkeyman - Monkeyman provides me the best reason yet for having created this section. What a great idea to upload your own image as part of your signature!

Monkeyman^(talk)

• Journalist - interesting, and the dissimilarity between the username and the signature has me wondering about the story behind it.

Orane (talk • cont.)

• Great Orange Pumpkin - With superscript, subscript, and musical notes, this one has a ton of character. I wish the notes were coded in HTML instead of simply pasted.

♫GoP♫_T^C_N

• Calvin999 - Give him points for confidence, though a review of his page warrants it. It would appear he updated talk that talk to watch n' learn between 2011-11-25 and 2011-11-29, and he's since changed it to you da one and updated Calvin to Aaron.

Calvin • ^{Watch n' Learn}

This also brings forth a question I'd already considered in the process of compiling this list: For the sake of consistency, do I want to dig through Wikipedia for all my previous signatures? Would that be considered a breach in etiquette? I haven't added too many signatures--probably less than five, certainly less than ten. I'd definitely settle on a design I want to keep before embarking on a project such as that.

• Jivesh - Black text on a plain cyan background.

Jivesh 1205 (talk)

• Legolas2186 - Most likely a LotR fan.

Legolas ^(talk2me)

• Wikipedian Penguin - A Linux reference, perhaps?

WP:PENGUIN · ^{[ TALK ]}

• Tomica - shadowed text. Neat.

Tomica (talk)

• Rufus/Surfur222 - creative

I Am Rufus • Conversation is a beautiful thing.

• Lil-unique1 - interesting use of Greek alphabet.

Lil_℧niquℇ №1 ^[talk]

• TulisaMarshall - basic, but still demonstrates the technique.

Tulisa Marshall '♥ ^{Click On Me}

• Koavf - Interesting use of special characters.

Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯

• Pixelyoshi - wow, I'm not even certain what I'm seeing

Π^x (discuter)

• OlYeller21 - simple, yet aesthetic

OlYeller21^Talktome

• Redrose64 - simple colored text

--Redrose64 (talk)

• Becritical - white and black, quite cool

B^e——C_ritical

• Ched - I suspect this is two revisions, or someone experimenting, but I'm not sure.

 Ched(talk) 

— Ched :  ? 

• Adam the atom - I like the name, box, and custom cursors

adam the atomTEC

• TreasuryTag - another neat box effect

TreasuryTag–t–c

• HorsePunchKid - makes interesting use of custom cursors

HorsePunchKid→龜

• JMiall - dashed box

JMiall₰

• Ttonyb1 - shadows, revisited

ttonyb

• Piotrus - From Athaenara's original page, this is the only one I found visually appealing. Its structural similarity to Ched isn't as noticeable until the text and colors are adapted to my preferred blues, whereupon the two are nearly indistinguishable. This one is several characters longer than Ched, so it's gone.

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk}