Thread: No sig lines means no sig lines

Hey guys, we disabled sig lines because we don't want sig lines in the forum.
This also means that you should not put your sig line IN your forum post as text.
Some people have started doing this, but that is not what we want. We don't want sig lines in the forum at all. Not as a dedicated sig line, and not as part of the post.

Just to be clear, can we add something like "best regards, Paul" or similar like we would sign an email? Thanks

Originally Posted by richmondesi

Just to be clear, can we add something like "best regards, Paul" or similar like we would sign an email? Thanks

I hope so! That ought to be part of the friendly nature of the place, IMO.

Yours eternally,

(signature omitted)

I can understand why the administration would prefer people not have large graphics in their sigs. It consumes a surprising amount of server resources that someone has to pay for. It also helps prevent a subtle form of spam. I would have expected that sort of thing could be disabled in the forum software for that reason.
I don't understand why a single line of text is off the table, however.

I cannot fathom why this would be an issue. Would someone care to explain?

Originally Posted by Jimbo7

I hope so! That ought to be part of the friendly nature of the place, IMO.

Yours eternally,

(signature omitted)

Yeah, but otoh, the way you've shown here, you have a 1 line post with a 4 line sig (including the empty lines).
And that's the clutter we wanted to get rid of.

Anyway, for now please don't do this.
I am discussing this with the other staff. If we would switch back to a 1 line sig in which you could put your name, and turn sigs back on, there would be double signatures (the one in the post and the one in the actual sig line).

We'd have to see what we do here. Even if we don't allow sig lines back, there might be other options to explore.

Ok, I'm a little confused here.
What you're describing is perfectly normal behaviour on many many forums and in fact to be expected particularly from older gentlemen who still tend to follow normal conventions for letter writing. In other words, that's not "clutter" it's readable text formatting done in an old school manner on a forum dealing with old school technology and techniques.
When you run through searches of (not on) a lot of other forums they come up in a condensed format because they have be processed to look like that for caching by the search engine companies who store hundreds of exabytes of data if not more.
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.

Ok, I'll post something that's less likely to be taken as critical and more likely to be seen as helpful, which is more my intention.
Another forum I help moderate uses the services of this group to help stop spammers: Stop Forum Spam
They provide automated checking as well as the ability to add spammers by username, email address and IP address to a database.
I mention this as I have seen (and banned from my other forum) many a spammer that used sig lines to include their spam links.

..Can I say, Love Carl, kiss kiss kiss, hug hug hug?

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.