Thread:Feedback/Stopping bad signatures?/Quiddity

Whilst custom sigs are "a chance to be individual", so are userpages.

Colorful custom sigs are: Visually distracting. They obscure or overwhelm a thread visually, much like gratuitous text-formatting does.

A solution: One of the primary reasons people like custom sigs, is so that they can scan down a talkpage looking for threads they've participated in. An alternative, is to use a script like Wikipedia:User:Ais523/highlightmyname2.js, which will put a background highlight on every mention of your username. This has the added benefit of highlighting when other people are talking about you! (if they use your full username).

I'd support having that as a default extension, and disallowing all text styling changes to sigs. Add a userpreference (or user.css explanation) so that one can change the highlight-color. (I use a bright green).

See Wikipedia:User:Athaenara/Gallery for a sample of what custom sigs opens the door to. Creative, yes, but the line between distracting and disruptive is thin.

(This is just meant to address styling. Adding other content (supplementary links/words) is outside of my concern here.)