Not really understanding how the wikipedia community operates, why were you irritated by the signature and how was writing the comments such an irreconcilable wrong? Were they inappropriate comments?
The reason I was annoyed about it was because signatures are the way you see who is saying something in a conversation thread. Back then you'd click on the person's username and get easy access to their pages, talk page, block links, contributions, etc. it also made it really hard to see what they had contributed. I was also concerned that someone would go what I in essence did - which was a really dumb move on my part, like I say.
Thanks for the insight!
Not sure what the status of admins are now.
If someone has a link in their signature pointing to an unassigned user name, then grabbing that username could also be interpreted at plugging a security hole as a stop gap measure while the problem is being discussed.
I don't see how it's outrageous. I don't see how you overstepped your bounds.
It's not clear to me what happened here.
The editor in question quite possibly had good intentions, or didn't see anything wrong with what they did. Whilst I was not a malicious actor, there was debate about the situation and I think people objected more to the way I went about proving the point I was making (which I maintain was valid). That's a fair cop, and I accept my action was rash.
But yes, it wasn't outrageous.