Hello, all:
To make the Reply tool more reliable, they'd like to introduce another requirement: Signatures should not include a line break.
This mostly appears in messages with fake signatures posted by Extension:MassMessage, but those generally shouldn't be replied to.
I plan to post a description on the main page, but for right now: Do you know of any editor who uses a multi-line signature? I've seen very few, and almost all of those have turned out to be a typo/accidental stray character.
I can't recall ever seeing one. I'm assuming that this is related to task T272667.
Me neither. If this requirement gets accepted/implemented, it would be nice if AntiCompositeNumber’s signature checker checked it.
I've added a description at New requirements for user signatures#Additional proposal (2021). On my end, there's no rush.
Signatures now includes a default check for line breaks, defined as \n <br> <div> <p>. There are 23 occurrences on enwiki. Most seem to be accidental or otherwise what we're trying to prohibit, but there are a few like Ahecht who are using it to stack text inside their signature. That's still probably problematic, and should be done differently.
@Matma Rex will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that <br> (if it's typed as the HTML code, not if it's typed by pressing ↵ Enter) is okay.
Maybe it shouldn't, but it's not causing any issues for DiscussionTools or other existing software. There are many stupider things you can put in your signature, and I don't want us to get bogged in discussions about what should or shouldn't be allowed, which is bound to happen if we propose anything remotely controversial.
We went ahead with making this change, and it will be deployed this week. If your signature contains a line break, you'll see a warning message in preferences, similar to how the other requirements are handled right now:
Your current signature is invalid. Although you can still use it, you won't be able to change it until you correct it.
Your signature must consist of a single line of wikitext.
This change is included in 1.37.0-wmf.3, which is being deployed this week. It'll reach Wikipedias this Thursday, 29 April, assuming everything goes well.