Purpose

• {{unsigned}}

Used to label unsigned comments in a conversation.

Usage

{{subst:unsigned|user name|date}}

user name

name or IP of user who left comment

date

datestamp from edit history (remember to label it UTC)

Example

Typing: {{Unsigned|Jpgordon|09:20, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)}} will yield: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jpgordon (talk • contribs) 09:20, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

History

• Created 16:22, May 13, 2005 by Jpgordon
• Added documentation Phil | Talk 09:20, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

See also

• {{Unsigned2}} -- same thing, arguments in reverse order

The added nbsp makes the space look much to big for me; Unless you intend there to be more space between the "by" and the link than between the other words, I think you may be trying to fix a problem in your browser's rendering here: Italic text and regular text shouldn't need artificial spacing between them. --W(t) 19:45, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

Remember that unlike in page histories, times on talk pages are not converted by the sytem to local time. Therefore "UTC" should be added and UTC times should be used as parameter. I saw in several pages, e.g. Talk:Albert Einstein, that an unspecified local time was used.--Patrick 09:27, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding nbsp -- sure, I'm trying to fix a problem in my browser's rendering; I've got this odd idea that a page should be readable on all browsers, not just some. A common hard-to-read condition is italic text followed by normal text. Regarding the times, all I do when using this is to cut and paste from the page history. Regarding the addition of that dash -- the second argument is for the date, not the name of the user putting in the template. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 21:43, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What browser are you using? I can't recreate any problems with firefox or netscape. --W(t) 11:30, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

Firefox, OS X. But it's trivial; if it bothers you enough to need to delete it, 'tsok. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 15:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, let's see if it's common first. Anyone else want to give their experiences? --W(t) 15:41, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

For the record what are the two arguments which can be passed into this template? Philip Baird Shearer 08:52, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for the documentation, Phil B. I should point out that I don't use this directly; a couple days after I created it (and after some people besides me were using it), I got lazy; I realized I could cut and paste the timestamp and user name from the page history and stick a pipe between them -- if I reversed the arguments. But rather than go and edit all the existing uses, I created instead Template:Unsigned2 -- which swaps the paramss and (thanks for the tip, Patrick) appends UTC to the date. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:33, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please put back in the UTC time zone info, as it does not seem to work any more. Philip Baird Shearer 23:25, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted back to Weyes' version of June 26. The new edits made the template much bulkier, in addition to losing the date stamp. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 23:37, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

The current template has a redundant {{{2}}} after it, like this — Preceding unsigned comment added by SlimVirgin (talk • contribs) Does anyone mind if I delete it? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:07, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

• It's not redundant. That's the argument that contains the time. Uncle G 23:40, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe it's a browser issue, but all I see is a 2. Are you seeing the date? I'm using Firefox and Mac OS 10.3.9. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:36, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
    • I just tried with Netscape and I'm still only seeing a 2. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:37, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
      • You see a 2 when someone hasn't followed the instructions for use, given at the top of this very page. That is not a reason to modify the template. If you see a 2, fix the use of the template. Uncle G 12:13, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • So what do I write to get the date instead of 2? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 14:16, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
          • Er, the date. See the "Usage" section above, on this very page, in particular the example. Uncle G 20:23, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• I would like this template to include the {{user}} template, as it includes links to talk and contribs. Agree/disagree? --IByte 18:27, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • There were no objections and I felt the idea was good so I made the change. Maybe someone will revert or discuss it now. --ZeroOne 23:53, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Looks good to me! --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:32, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar

Saying "preceding insigned comment by X" grammatically refers to the template itself. It seems to me like it ought to say "following unsigned comment by X" or "preceding is an unsigned comment by X" (though the first sounds nicer to me. Any thoughts? --Blackcap | talk 00:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This kind of shorthand is quite common, and not particularly ambiguous, given that the template is placed in the standard place for a signature. Changing "preceding" to "following" would be confusing - it would reverse the apparent meaning of the template. Adding "is" would be fine but wordy; I guess it could be shortened to just "Unsigned comment by X", if there's a real risk non-native speakers will read it according to strict grammatical rules instead of according to English convention? Haeleth 12:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't realize that this was actually a common way to put the phrase. I was confused by it when I first encountered it (and I'm a Yank with English as my native tongue), and thought a change might do some good. "Unsigned comment by X" seems to work better, but if this is the standard than it's still fairly obvious what message is being sent, even if the grammar is somewhat dubious. --Blackcap | talk 16:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Blackcap above. The word "preceding" is throwing me off a bit - im not quite sure whether its meant to be put before or after a comment. -- jeffthejiff (talk) 09:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant—Ec5618 added the simple words "the" and "is," which makes all the difference [1]. I'm going to go add that into the other unsigned templates. Blackcap (talk) 21:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's plausible that people will subst this template at times, I believe the category should be here. See Wikipedia:Subst for some more information. The same trick applies to e.g. deletion templates; since people have a tendency to subst them, any noinclude sections cause that to mess up royally. Radiant_>|< 10:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm. I was going on most other templates in this category having the tag on their main page, and what knowledge I have of the <noinclude> tags. You may be right; since I don't really know, I'm going to defer to you. --Blackcap | talk 10:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I copied this to commons: commons:Template:unsigned. pfctdayelise 13:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I recently used this template on a user who never signed his own messages, but the notice was then removed by him, so the message became unsigned again. What does everyone think about such an action? Shawnc 16:35, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shoot him and burn the body. Who was it? My talk page will do. - Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 17:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the <small> font used here? My eyes are getting too old. -Jcbarr 22:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

that's an excellent point, i also do not understand the rationale behind making it small. Themindset 23:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The template text definitely should be of normal size. joturner 14:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By making the text small, it stands out from the rest of the discussion. Since the format of the template is quite straight-forward, I not sure what the problem is. the first link leads to the User's page, the second to ver Talk page, the third to contributions. The text is certainly not less legible than the rest of the small text on Wikipedia. -- Ec5618 14:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• My thinking behind making the font small was to keep it from intruding too much on the conversation. It's not supposed to scream THIS WAS AN UNSIGNED POST; it's supposed to provide just a tiny bit of information to keep the conversation flowing. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 00:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To those who find <small> too small - raise the minimum font size in your browser settings. Most modern browsers (supporting CSS) can do that, but some are easier than others. ··gracefool |☺ 09:44, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Recently a bot has been substituting the template on talk pages. This is probably an unnecessary step and as I forsee it is just going to cause problems. Issues have already been raised on User talk:Tawkerbot. Also see WP:SUBST. If anyone else feels the same way about this please make a point on the bot user talk page.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 16:03, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: As of this posting, issue appears to be resolved. --Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 20:54, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Per the inclusion of the date discussed above, I needed to replace {{{2|}}} with {{{2}}} when copying the tempate to Wikicities. It worked. Is this a bug? GChriss 04:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily; I don't think Wikicities has the added functionality of default values yet. This functionality isn't publicly available until the next version of MediaWiki. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 12:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Broken noinclude

Please fix the <noinclude>, it's annoying if articles with it show up in Category:Internal link templates, here's a manually fixed example (diff). Omniplex 09:23, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem to be broken. The noinclude syntax is correct, and random pages I checked aren't in the category. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 12:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, better let's not investigate how Murphy managed to copy the <noinclude> category to Talk:Free Republic ;-) Omniplex 12:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:

[[vi:Tiêu bản:Vô danh]]

Thanks.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Currently we have: —This unsigned comment was added by

I propose shortening it to: —Unsigned comment by

The other words just sound like fluff to me:

• This - unnecessary because the text is clearly referring to the preceding comment
• was added - unnecessary because there is no other way to make a comment than by adding it, also passive voice sounds bad

Any objections/thoughts? -SCEhardT 19:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]