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On the documentation section, the example for {{User12}}. I digged a bit, and found that {{Signatures}} is simply calling the template, so there is must be a problem with either the template itself or with how it handles the HTML tags that are fed to him on the example. Looking at the documentation section of User12, I don't see any example that looks at all like the example here

It's not vandalism because the example was added on 11 March 2007 by a user that was making several improvements [1] --Enric Naval (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. [2]--Patrick (talk) 07:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please add af:Sjabloon:Ongetekend. --Eivind (t) 11:48, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 17:22, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you :) --Eivind (t) 21:48, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}}

Please remove the <small> tag pair from this template. The text is unreadable (and I've just used it on Wikipedia talk:Accessibility!). As to earlier discussion on this page, two years ago; if the intention is to make the text "stand out from the rest of the discussion", use emphasis ('') or emboldening ('''); that's what they're for; as to "raise the minimum font size in your browser settings", users already have the text in their browser set to their preferred size, it's not for us to override that. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 11:40, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd do this, but I want a few opinions first. I agree with this edit, but others may not. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 14:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In this particular case:

1. We should not use bold for emphasis (per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)), but could use italics.

2. It might be preferable to simply fix the text-size that <small> specifies, so that all its usages within Wikipedia are improved. If we can't read it here, we can't read it anywhere...

Related current-discussions to note: Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Text size and MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Font sizes. There's also the #Why Small? thread near the top of this page. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the small tag. If we want to change the formatting, it would be better to wrap the whole thing in a span and style that with CSS. But I don't see any need for that, plain text is fine for a signature. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:35, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, maybe it would be and I'm just crustily holding on to, "the way things was." But I must say that I *preferred* the small text. Mainly because it isn't just a signature. *—Preceding unsigned comment added by some text (talk • contribs) some date* <- Much longer than the typical signature. Just one editor's opinion, but I doubt I'm the only one. LaughingVulcan 03:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

←Small text is an accessibility barrier for some people. A shorter verison might replace:

Preceding unsigned comment added by 

with

Autosigned for

Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 09:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What if I wrap all the unsigned-foo templates in a span with class="autosigned"? Then users can style them in any desired way. The real problem with small is that the only way to style it is to change the style of all small tags. With a custom CSS class, signatures can be styled independently. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine, so long as the default for editors who do not set a preference is not to reduce the text size. Please remember to update Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes, too. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm honestly not a fan of the <small>-lacking template now. IMO, it looks slightly uglier and more obtrusive – it looked pretty neat as it was. If we're looking for a size in between normal and small, why not use a span with the CSS property font-size property set to a percentage, say 90%?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Example (talk • contribs)

<small> is equivalent to 80%, I believe. haz (talk) 19:02, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would take us back to the state where the small size can't be overridden by CSS. later today, I'll add the span tag, unless someone objects to it. I'll also add a corresponding small rule to Common.css, which will return everything to the previous appearance but with the proper underpinnings. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I object. As I said above "That's fine, so long as the default for editors who do not set a preference is not to reduce the text size". This is an accessibility issue; and accessibility concerns override (or should, at least) aesthetic preferences. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that the main goals are:

• The default should reflect the style most people would prefer
• It should be easy for those who prefer a different style to change it.

The point of the span is to address the second bullet. The reason I proposed to set the size to small by default is for the first bullet. users who prefer larger font sizes will, overall, be familiar with using CSS to restyle things. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:41, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. The first point should be "that people can read"; the personal tastes of the well-sighted majority is of lesser importance. Let those who dislike the accessible version change the visual design; not those who need it to be accessible. I find your closing assertion without foundation (and certainly without evidence). Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Without addressing the size issue (beyond expressing my agreement that accessibility is the most important consideration), I oppose the suggested change from "Preceding unsigned comment added by" to "Autosigned for". In addition to providing attribution, the tag is supposed to inform users that they're expected to sign their posts. The latter text could be interpreted to mean that it's normal to instead rely on the "autosigning" feature. —David Levy 20:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You point is a good one. I was trying to find something that was both shorter, and less hectoring. perhaps:

Signed for xxx (Please sign your posts)

would be agreeable?

I am going to add a span to the templates, with class "autosigned", but pending discussion I am not going to change Common.css. I am also not going to change the text used. Just adding a CSS class. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With respect, I disagree that there is any accessibility issue here. My browser (and I think all other major ones,) have a nice feature that the size of all text on any page is dynamically resizable. In mine, I hold down Control and move the scroll wheel, and all text gets bigger, or smaller. I use that function fairly regularly, when there is text too small for me to read. Windows contains a magnifier function. Because those with problems reading small text already have tools which change text size, there is no accessibility issue to Wikipedia about this, IMVHO. It has a flavor of feel-good political correctness which accomplishes no true purpose, to me. But if you're dead set on doing it, well, fine. I just will continue to dislike it intensely, and feels it detracts from Talk and Project pages without sufficient cause. However, I wonder if any RfC has been opened on the subject? LaughingVulcan 00:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Correction to above. I found the link above to the Accessibility project space. I still disagree intensely with the notion that a person with vision issues can't resize things themselves, but see where the discussion home for the above comments would be. (And thank you to whomever posted those Wikilinks!) LaughingVulcan 00:18, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is the regular sized version really more accessible? 69.140.152.55 (talk) 00:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

“Small text is an accessibility barrier for some people”—Mr Mabbett, please back that up with some citations. I've expounded at more length and cited a few guidelines at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Proposed increase, but the gist is that accessibility guidelines do not recommend minimum text sizes or larger text sizes. Anyone who needs to can resize the text in their browser or read it in their screen reader. Of course of Wikipedia's millions of readers, some will always complain that some text is too small—if you propose enlarging text because it's too small for you, you are in effect imposing your personal preference on the project. —Michael Z. 2008-09-11 04:49 z

Oh, come off it. This is a talk page, not an article: you are free to express opinions on a talk page, and you don't need to provide citations for those! Now, I personally preferred the small text size in this template, as it was less obtrusive; however, the point about accessibility is a valid one. --RFBailey (talk) 14:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[rewrote more clearly] If it looks better in someone's opinion then of course they are free to say so.

But accessibility is a measurable quality. There are a number of accessibility guidelines and none of them says that small text is an accessibility barrier, none of them recommends setting minimum text sizes, or against using small fonts. Andy Mabbett's argument is based on a factual statement, which happens to be incorrect. I don't think it's fair to invoke accessibility, a technical subject which most editors aren't familiar with, a subject concerned with the rights of disabled people, when the fact is that accessibility is not affected by this. —Michael Z. 2008-09-11 21:45 z

Are you claiming that the statement that "Small text is an accessibility barrier for some people" is factually incorrect? If I understand you correctly, then that is what you are saying. In which case, then you are clearly mistaken. Of course it is the case that certain people with limited vision (depending exactly on what particular impairment they have) find small text difficult to read; why do you think large print books are produced? Now, if it happens that the standard text size on Wikipedia is OK to read (possibly after adjusting browser settings globally), but that <small> is not, then that is clearly a barrier to accessibility. Now, of course that person could adjust their browser settings so that everything appears in a bigger size, then that might be a problem, causing the rest of the page not to fit on the screen any more, or just being too big.

As it happens, I do have experience of dealing with people with visual impairments, so this technical subject is one that I'm familiar with to a certain extent. --RFBailey (talk) 22:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone who can't see stuff in <small> tags, they are able to use any number of the accessibility functions in almost any mainstream browser released within the last decade. If they don't, they'll have a lot more problems with 90% of the sites on the internet, god knows how many templates on this site, and my and plenty others' signature(s). Most obviously, the default font size of the top tabs, the left menu, and a few other things is the same size. So, {{unsigned}} is the least of their concerns when it comes to navigating the site :P.

Moreover, making what is essentially maintenance text the same size as regular text presents another problematic accessibility issue: whether normal people are more or less easily able to either focus on or graze past the text that is or is not important in context. If you're looking for accessibility battles, though, a more valid one, in my opinion, is article size. There's lots to be done there. Thus I oppose making the text size larger. --slakr^\ talk / 23:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RFBailey, there are two issues here: design for readability, and accessibility.

Any well-designed book or other document you pick up or read online is likely to have a visual hierarchy of text elements. Typically this includes a range of elements less important than the main body text: footnotes or endnotes and their references, copyright notices, page numbers, chapter names in the top or bottom margin, publication notes, and even some subheadings. They are often smaller than comfortably readable body copy. If a reader is interested in their content, they can deal with them once by moving the book closer for a moment, holding it closer to the light, or adjusting their eyeglasses. 90% of the time, they merely need to identify these elements. Similarly, the reader of a website can lean towards their monitor for a second, adjust their browser zoom, adjust their screen magnifier, or whatever. If all of these elements were restricted to the same size as the body copy, then overall readability would suffer due to visual clutter, and the document would resemble a baby book.

If block quotations appear often enough and we judge them to be routinely difficult to read in Wikipedia, then maybe we should up their size by the equivalent of a pixel or two. But no one needs the full text of “Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe Schmoe (talk • contribs)” to appear at full body-copy size a dozen or more times on a single page. If a single CSS step smaller is too small for you to resolve in your web browser's default display at all, then you probably should adjust the default size.

Accessibility is a different issue. Anyone whose access to web pages is limited by serious vision problems does not need {{unsigned}} to be rendered at 1 or 2 pixels taller. The recommendations in the accessibility guidelines that I know of bear this out. If you are skeptical, please review my citations at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Proposed increase. —Michael Z. 2008-09-13 01:48 z

I have already stated that my personal preference was to keep the {{unsigned}} template text in the <small> size; I think it was better that way as it was unobtrusive. What I was objecting to was your use of invalid arguments in the discussion: requesting "citations" for someone's opinion, and claiming that a perfectly valid, logical remark is "a factual statement, which happens to be incorrect". Just because you disagree with something doesn't mean it's wrong. --RFBailey (talk) 04:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have doubts about whether smaller text is an accessibility problem. If it is, it's also used in many places in article space, for example footnotes, so that needs looking at too.

That aside, if it's decided to leave the Unsigned templates in a larger font, I'd prefer the message to be shortened as suggested above (to "Autosigned for XXX" or whatever). That way it'll be less obtrusive and not clutter the page up so much. (Even in a small font, the current version is a bit long anyway in my opinion.)

The majority of users either do not log in, or even if they do, they don't set any preferences, so I don't think using a CSS class and leaving it to users is a good solution. Most people following the discussion won't benefit from that at all. JRawle (Talk) 14:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just an idea: one way to distinguish autosigned posts without using font size, colour or emphasis would be to put it all in parenthesis. (Autosigned for Example • talk) I guess using square brackets could cause issues, so stick to standard ones. JRawle (Talk) 14:52, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with some editors above. The raised issue is doubtful: the same small text is used in many other places in Wikipedia, so why "fix" the unsigned template? Implemented solution (class="autosigned") will be used by so few users that it doesn't justify much more complex wikicode. —AlexSm 18:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How's that? I don't have any preference whether the default size is small or not, but I think it makes perfect sense that the size should be configurable by CSS. It looks to me like the bulk of comments here are in support of the small font size being the default - am I reading consensus correctly? Let me know; I'll fix all the unsigned templates to use the small size if that's the outcome with the most support. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:53, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't state a preference initially, but yes, I agree with making the unsigned-text smaller than the standard text, and using a css-class to achieve that (rather than a raw <small> tagpair).

It's the rendered size of the smaller text (which is currently being discussed at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Font sizes by people who understand cross-browser consistency better than we) that is under legitimate/subjective dispute (and this isn't the talkpage to hash that out on). -- Quiddity (talk) 19:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CBM: I'm not saying that the CSS class is completely useless, it's just that it won't be used much (especially since it was never added to template documentation). And users that have a problem with small text should look for more universal solutions, like setting minimal allowed font size in Firefox. One other note: class="autosigned" might give a wrong impression that it's okay not to sign. And one question: couldn't we use simpler <small class="autosigned"> ? —AlexSm 20:42, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I assume anyone who wants to know the CSS class will just look at the source code of the template. At least, that's what I always do. As I keep pointing out, the point of making a separate class is to allow these to be formatted differently than other small text. For example, you could make them grey instead of black. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:10, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As an "ordinary" editor of Wikipedia, I've just used the unsigned2 template and was surprised to see it in normal size characters. In my opinion, the small characters helped the unsigned notice to stand out. At the moment there is nothing to do this: it looks like it is part of the original text. In addition, the current unsigned2 template does not match its documentation which still says that the text will appear in small characters. Please could those involved in this discussion revert the templates to their previous consistent status until a consensus has been formed on any changes - which should then be consistently applied to both templates and documentation. Regards. -- MightyWarrior (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The others should now match {{unsigned}}. -SCEhardT 21:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(The section above is too long, so I'm starting a new one).

• Okay, we went from <small> to <span class=> then back to <small> and now to <small><span class=>. Since no one seemed to notice my previous question, I'll ask it again: why don't you simply use <small class=> ? —AlexSm 14:53, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Another comment: class="autosigned" is not a very good choice, as new users might think it's okay not to sign. Please change it to class="unsigned" which is better in all respects. —AlexSm 14:53, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to go through and change them all; I don't think the name of the class matter very much, but I'm not going to revert anyone who renames the class or puts it onto the small tag. But it would be nice if the templates get into sync again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]