Thread: No sig lines means no sig lines

Originally Posted by MickRussell

This is a community, not a bulletiin board or email discussion group. If the board is struggling with storage issues then perhaps the community could help cover the costs of expanding server capacity, but just putting the clamps on people without telling them why is a little harsh.

This is not a storage or data issue.

There are a couple of other issues. The first one is that often, sig lines take up much more space than the actual message.
At 20 posts per page, that is an awful lot of scrolling. Pages are now at least 50% shorter for the same amount of content.
The second is that a post should only be about the post. Not about self-expression through off topic content. With this I mean the large amount of people who use their sig to show their political affiliation, their view on religion or the second amendment, or their philosophical approach to life and the problems of the world. We have a conversation forum for discussing these things, and if you want to share your opinions with the world, that is what facebook and twitter are for.
And in case of advertizing, people should have the certainty that vendors post because they have content to share, and not to get their webstores plastered across the forums.

And while I do understand that in formal communications, people sign at the bottom, the fact is that this is not a formal communication.
If you have a conversation with someone, you don't finish every paragraph with 'Best regards' either. The medium does not work that way.
In a similar vein, people say 'over' when using walkie talkies, but not when using cell phones. The medium works differently.

The forum part of SRP is a discussion forum, with a back and forth of conversation. signatures and prefaces are typically not used in a discussion. While it is true that many forums allow use of sig lines for self expression, that does not necessarily mean it's a good idea. Many forums I have been to allow members to not-quite insult each other, goad each other into heated arguments, and be outright rude, especially in the conversation forums. We're deviating from the norm here as well, and rightly so.