Last modified: 2013-08-14 12:30:47 UTC
This problem has caused quite a bit of inconvenience and confusion for new users. In addition to the examples in the above-linked thread, I also know of the following other instances (found through the edit summary search tool on my username): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Froid#Your_signature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Theattackcorgi#Your_signature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Seonookim/Archive_2#Yoursignature Affected accounts range in age from relatively old (Froid, August 2006) to fairly new (Theattackcorgi, February 2013), so it's hard to tell if the bug is still a problem now. However it obviously affects a non-trivial number of users, and it would be nice if there signature preferences could be restored to the default values. Therefore I wasn't sure whether to file this bug under MediaWiki/Preferences or Wikimedia/Site requests.
It's almost certainly a usability issue rather than a database problem, per PrimeHunter's comment and my response to it at the technical village pump: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=565611456&oldid=565603146 It will be moot when Flow is released.
