# [RANT] I know it's been said before but...



## Djeta Thernadier (Apr 12, 2004)

...what is up with people who have bigger sig quotes than most of their posts? I have seen so many posts that have about 2 words in them , followed by a signature that is a good paragraph followed by a link of some sort and a picture. 

Gah!!!!!!!!

Maybe I'm just getting cantankerous with my sprained ankle but really, why do people need to have entire disserations as their signature??? I can't possibly be the only one who gets annoyed by this! 

I mean, have a link, have a quote or two (or heck, have 3, 4) or even a paragraph in smaller, different colored font! But for pete's sake there is no need for a novel!

Grrrr.

[/rant]

EDIT : And as a courtesy to others, I have just made my already small sig, even smaller.


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## Crothian (Apr 12, 2004)

I agree...you can also always report them and ask the mods to request that they shorten them.


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## Piratecat (Apr 12, 2004)

When you notice it, report the post by clicking the small exclamation point icon below their name. A moderator will take a glance and politely ask them to reduce the size if it's deemed too long.

All part of the friendly service!


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## Djeta Thernadier (Apr 12, 2004)

Thanks PC. That I shall do.


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## Len (Apr 12, 2004)

Djeta Thernadier said:
			
		

> I can't possibly be the only one who gets annoyed by this!



You're not. The worst are the ones with images wider than my browser window that screw up the formatting. I've taken to browsing with signatures turned off.


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## trancejeremy (Apr 12, 2004)

What I don't get is, why allow images in sigs at all? AFAIK, there is no good purpose for doing so.

And why not put a limit, 3 lines or so?


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## Piratecat (Apr 12, 2004)

Because we don't want to, mostly. And people who prefer to turn them off, so it's all good.

Len, let us know when you see problem images.


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## BSF (Apr 12, 2004)

Heck, I feel bad about the length of my .sig at times.  But, I have tried to keep it as small as I can.


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## Emiricol (Apr 12, 2004)

Sadly, everyone has a different gauge of what is "too long". I think 6 lines of text is too long. Anything less than that space (including pictures) is fine with me.


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## Citizen Mane (Apr 12, 2004)

I usually make sure not to repost my signature each time I respond to a thread, and I've noticed that some other folks do as well.  This helps somewhat, IMO.

Best,
Nick


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## the Jester (Apr 12, 2004)

I think my sig pretty much rides the edge of not quite too long.  I try to keep it this side of obnoxious, and I never stick big images or anything into it.


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## Michael Morris (Apr 12, 2004)

I recently set up this 'sig, but I'm considering shrinking it some.  Sometimes I forget to turn it off.


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## johnsemlak (Apr 12, 2004)

Read this thread and made my sig smaller.

But I really don't see why it should bother people so much.  Sigs often contain really useful stuff too.  THat's the reason people use them.

The only ones that I mind are the one's with excessively large images or espcially if they're super wide and mess up the formatting.  That's a pain.


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## diaglo (Apr 12, 2004)

johnsemlak said:
			
		

> But I really don't see why it should bother people so much.  Sigs often contain really useful stuff too.  THat's the reason people use them.




plus you can turn them off if you really don't like them


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## Djeta Thernadier (Apr 12, 2004)

diaglo said:
			
		

> plus you can turn them off if you really don't like them




The thing is I LIKE 99% of the sigs. I like the quotes and the links. I see no excessive sigs here in this thread, even Spoony Bards is really not that huge. When they are a different font/size/color than you post in that helps a lot too.

I don't want to turn off sigs. It's not a matter of my computer having problems loading. Maybe I'm just grumpy.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Apr 12, 2004)

I don't really have a problem with large sigs, unless the same one shows up over and over and over again in a single thread. There has been exactly one time when I found a sig to be offensive, and that was due to some very sexist images that it contained. Other than that, I usually don't even notice them while reading. Maybe I'm in the minority...


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## Arnwyn (Apr 12, 2004)

I _love_ the ability to turn off the sigs. What a wonderful feature!


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## Dimwhit (Apr 12, 2004)

Djeta Thernadier said:
			
		

> Thanks PC. That I shall do.




So if any of you are asked by the mods to change your sig, you know who to blame...


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## Crothian (Apr 12, 2004)

Ya, blame Piratecat!!


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## Darkness (Apr 12, 2004)

Crothian said:
			
		

> Ya, blame Piratecat!!



 Did anybody ever make this their custom title? I forgot. But someone should.


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## Crothian (Apr 12, 2004)

Darkness said:
			
		

> Did anybody ever make this their custom title? I forgot. But someone should.





It made it into a lot of sigs at the time as the "I blame....." became populiar for a while.  I really liked the I blame Hivemind ones myself, but those somehow offended people.  That was wierd.  But I don't recall ever seeing it as a custoim title.  But custom titles were not as many or populiar back then.


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## Darkness (Apr 13, 2004)

Sigs, yeah, but never titles IIRC.

Heh. I even made me a "don't blame Piratecat - blame _me_" sig pic once. Somebody else like it so much that they used it.


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## Crothian (Apr 13, 2004)

I remember that.  I still blame Piratecat though, because I know for a fact he was responsible for it.


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## Angcuru (Apr 16, 2004)

I don't have a problem with big sigs, as long as they have a POINT to them.  Links to good content, and relevant/amusing pics are good.  People who post entire songs, or big, annoying pics are of the worst sort.


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## Andrew D. Gable (Apr 28, 2004)

While we're on this topic... do I need to shorten my sig at all?  Seems a good size to me, but then I have a biased opinion.


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## Chacal (Apr 30, 2004)

Andrew D. Gable said:
			
		

> While we're on this topic... do I need to shorten my sig at all?  Seems a good size to me, but then I have a biased opinion.



IMO It' s ok if it shows only once in the thread. Having different (smaller ?) characters helps, because it doesn't detract from the conversation flow and is thus easier to skip.



Chacal


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## Zappo (Apr 30, 2004)

My sig is slightly bigger than my usual right now. Maybe I'll shrink it after having read this thread. I try not to include it in my post when the content is very short or when I have already posted several times in the thread, but often I forget.

 Edit: dumb me. Of course I can shorten it, just take out the now-useless Petz begging.


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## RangerWickett (Apr 30, 2004)

This current EOM advertising image might be a bit too big, or perhaps just shameless.  Any opinions?

I noticed that, on a small screen resolution, like 600 x 800, it makes the screen have to scroll to show the very right edge of it.  Hrm.


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## Cheiromancer (Apr 30, 2004)

Ryan,

A bit on the large side.  I think if it were about 2/3 or 3/4 of its current size it would be about right.


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## Ghostwind (Apr 30, 2004)

Here's a question for thought. Does the size of a sig influence the speed of the boards? In other words, if sigs were limited to text only and a certain number of characters, would that increase the speed and stability of the boards?


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## LightPhoenix (Apr 30, 2004)

Ghostwind said:
			
		

> Here's a question for thought. Does the size of a sig influence the speed of the boards? In other words, if sigs were limited to text only and a certain number of characters, would that increase the speed and stability of the boards?



In theory, yes.  Any time you have images, that adds a degree of overhead.  If you got rid of images in signatures, removed avatars and post icons, that would again in theory help the boards.  

Would that boost be anything more than marginal?  Probably not.  Right now, what ENWorld needs is a better server, and while Morrus and crew can keep making the boards more efficient, the site is just going to keep growing.  Of course, more bandwidth never hurts, but I think the server is the more important thing, and probably cheaper at this stage too.


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## Heretic Apostate (May 1, 2004)

I've kept my sig as small as possible, and tried to make sure it's subtle.

I browse with both sigs and avatars turned off, to get a better signal-to-noise ratio.  But I wish there was a way to view sigs and avatars of individuals, without having to go to the User CP, click on Options, choose to enable them, then go back to the thread, refresh the screen, see the sig/avatar, then go through the whole process to turn them off again.

Are people's avatars and sigs stored in their profile, perhaps?


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## Sniktch (May 1, 2004)

Sigs often contain something that makes me laugh, or links to Story Hours, or advertisements for products, or other handy things.  I first found the Story Hour forum by clicking a link in Ziona's sig.  I've only seen one or two that struck me as too long recently, but I have seen a few that were too wide.  That can be a little annoying, as then I have to scroll over a bit to see all the text. The middle mouse button helps out, though.

I'm set to 800x600 right now and you're right, RW, the current banner is just wide enough that I have to scroll to see the last little bit.


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## Zappo (May 1, 2004)

Aren't images on signatures stored on people's own hosting, rather than the enworld server? They shouldn't impact the server's speed itself (though of course, the person viewing the thread still has to load them).


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## LightPhoenix (May 1, 2004)

Zappo said:
			
		

> Aren't images on signatures stored on people's own hosting, rather than the enworld server? They shouldn't impact the server's speed itself (though of course, the person viewing the thread still has to load them).



Doh, true dat yo.  I'm dumb.


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## Jarval (May 3, 2004)

Darkness said:
			
		

> Heh. I even made me a "don't blame Piratecat - blame _me_" sig pic once. Somebody else like it so much that they used it.




You mean this one?







And yeah, it was me who used it in my sig


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## Heretic Apostate (May 3, 2004)

Just to let people know, you *can* look at people's sigs and avatars, without turning them back on, by clicking on their name to get that drop-down menu.  So that saves me some steps.


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## Brother Shatterstone (May 3, 2004)

I've never thought something was to big but I do try to keep mine small as I never remember to turn if off after multiple posts.  (I can only seem to remember in the IC section.)


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## woodelf (May 5, 2004)

Emiricol said:
			
		

> Sadly, everyone has a different gauge of what is "too long". I think 6 lines of text is too long. Anything less than that space (including pictures) is fine with me.




you *do* realize that your .sig attached to that ~3line message was roughly 11 lines long?


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## woodelf (May 5, 2004)

Andrew D. Gable said:
			
		

> While we're on this topic... do I need to shorten my sig at all?  Seems a good size to me, but then I have a biased opinion.




seems perfect to me: 4 lines, small text, not too long.


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## woodelf (May 6, 2004)

johnsemlak said:
			
		

> Read this thread and made my sig smaller.
> 
> But I really don't see why it should bother people so much.  Sigs often contain really useful stuff too.  THat's the reason people use them.
> 
> The only ones that I mind are the one's with excessively large images or espcially if they're super wide and mess up the formatting.  That's a pain.






			
				johnsemlak's .sig said:
			
		

> Help me convert X4: The Master of the Desert Nomads
> Moscow D&D Club
> 
> Got a homebrew or varient Core Class? Post it here.
> ...




OK, now let me just preface this with saying that "useful" is like "too long"--it's very subjective. However, from my POV, the sort of "useful" stuff that should go in a .sig is stuff that (1) is semi-perpetual, (2) is identifying, (3) you need/want people to see over and over again. .sigs are *not* for adding a whole 'nother topic of conversation, providing lists of links, or otherwise re-transmitting info that is irrelevant to the topic at hand, just 'cause you want to shout and wave it about. You get one, maybe 2 lines of exception to all this--put whatever you want there: quotes, website links, etc.  IMHO, if you feel the need to turn it off for subsequent posts in a thread, it's too long.  

Personally, if you keep your .sig down to 4 lines (and that's ~80char lines--while most of us don't use such small monitors any more, and things aren't hard wrapped at 72 or 80 chars, it's still a polite length to keep to, emminently readable, and doesn't risk wrapping into 2 or 3 lines), i really don't care _what's_ in it. But if it's any longer than that, it had better be something that i _want_ to be constantly reminded about (like who i just heard from).

So, taking John's .sig (above) as an example, i'd say the only relevant parts would be the "Moscow D&D Club" and "Complete list of E-zines" links, and _maybe_ the X4 link--but probably not.

Or, if you really want all that info in the .sig, it could at least be tightened up a lot. Use text colors or bullets so you can get rid of all those blank lines. Both of the thread links could be trimmed by making the sentence the link and ditch the "post here" bit. Use font tags to smallify everything, not just the last two lines. Use brackets, braces, slashes, pipes, or whatever so that you can put multiple short items on one line. There're a lot of ways to keep the "small .sig is necessary" crowd happy while still putting lots of stuff in, to satisfy yourself.


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