Signature Rules: Time for a Rethink?

biko

Animated avatars and sigs can be discreet but also like this and there is no way to "police" it since both are animated.



The easier rules the better in my opinion, for instance:
Left justified only
Text max 4 lines incl space lines - font 1 or 2 only
Images any number totalling 125 high, 500 wide and 20 kb heavy
Animation, none at all.
Same rules for everyone on the site, posters, mods, admins.

In the other thread Hagar mentioned letting only subscribers have images. This could be good as it could increase subscriptions (rather than access to Sex & Sex :P) That may require some hack by Cult?

Black_Knight

Xavi6 wrote: »

Personally I think the width restriction should go. Something that's 300 wide is not taking up any more space than something that's 700 wide if they are both the same height.

I was thinking the same thing! Im wasting all these lovely pixels here! Granted, bigger (wider) sig pictures means a bigger filesize. If we are to make sigs wider, we would have to make the filesize limit bigger too.

Screw animated Sigs! Pointless waste of time, I come to boards to read thing which interest me, i dont want to be lambasted with flashy lights on every post!
On a different forum im on they have the best gif ever thread. Its quite good really, people can vent their gifs there!

Animated avatars im less against, their smaller, less in your face, but this would have to have a strict filesize limit on them.

faceman

Animated avatars and sigs just look tacky. If you look at other forums that allow them, many threads just end up in conversations and comments via animations.

Black_Knight

Biko thats giving me a damn head ache even trying to read your post!

Earthhorse

SteveC wrote: »

I think sigs should be reduced to a single line witty comment.

I agree. I really don't get these huge fuck off sigs some people insist on having; they're completely distracting and break up the flow of a thread (for the record, I browse with sigs off).

Several forums I've used don't allow sigs at all and they work perfectly fine.

Dades

faceman wrote: »

Animated avatars and sigs just look tacky.

I beg to disagree...
Some are completely tasteful.

faceman

Dades wrote: »

I beg to disagree...
Some are completely tasteful.

ahem, i've changed my vote.....

Black_Knight

They can get much more.... shall we say, better then that, a little less tasteful though. Would animated gifs such as the delightful wee lass above be approved on boards? Me thinks not.

Edit: Look at the file size on that! No way any avatar which is in anyway as entertaining as that would be allowed

Eoin

biko wrote: »

The easier rules the better in my opinion, for instance:
Left justified only

Why left justified only? That seems like quite an arbitrary rule.

smilingeyerish

no! no animation! i dont think there should be any type of picture in a signature! why? well, because it alerts people who glance at my screen while passing by my desk at work that i am just dossing! at least a screen with plain text could nearly pass for some type of work!

javaboy

smilingeyerish wrote: »

no! no animation! i dont think there should be any type of picture in a signature! why? well, because it alerts people who glance at my screen while passing by my desk at work that i am just dossing! at least a screen with plain text could nearly pass for some type of work!

Just turn off signatures then.

The_Conductor

For the sake of those using mobile devices (which are becoming increasingly common) the left alignment rule should be kept and enforced more strongly. Even with regular rendering its very easy to hang devices with centre or right aligned sigs (Opera is better than either FF or other alternates).

S.

The_Conductor

eoin_s wrote: »

Why left justified only? That seems like quite an arbitrary rule.

Because anything other than left justified totally bolloxes up mobile devices (iphones, Samsung F700s, mobile phones, Windows mobile devices, small tablet laptops that can't render at 600x840 or above (e.g. an Asus eeepc)).

People increasingly use these mobile devices for randomly browsing the internet- its no longer an expectation that people are on a desktop machine.

Eoin

Left aligned text will make a mobile browser hang?

The_Conductor

eoin_s wrote: »

Left aligned text will make a mobile browser hang?

No- centre or right aligned may though.

Eoin

smccarrick wrote: »

No- centre or right aligned may though.

Sorry, that was what I meant. That sounds very strange if it is the case.

seamus

smccarrick wrote: »

People increasingly use these mobile devices for randomly browsing the internet- its no longer an expectation that people are on a desktop machine.

Actually this is something I thought of last night while I looked at boards on my bro's new iPhone.

It's all well and good to say "Mobile Browsers should turn sigs off and use m.boards.ie", but we're getting into an era now where people will by default do a lot of their browsing on smaller devices such as the iPhone. The standard boards skin looks fine on these, but if you include big gaudy images in signatures, it wastes space.

At the moment and up to now, people didn't really "surf" on mobile devices. They knew what sites they wanted to look at, and of them which ones were visible on their device. Over the next few years we'll be moving into territory where mobile devices can handle most if not all websites, and it's those websites with the neatest content (i.e. images and ads only where images are appropriate) which will win out.

The_Conductor

eoin_s wrote: »

Sorry, that was what I meant. That sounds very strange if it is the case.

Depends on how the browser tries to display the page- some browsers are optimised for mobile devices- others try to scale the regular page (which is where snarl-ups most frequently occur). Safari and Firefox showing regular rather than optimised pages are the normal culprits, Opera seems to be a lot more stable- though its a bitch viewing the non-optimised pages. Then again- vBulletin is optimised (thats not to say it presents as optimised- which it often doesn't).

S.

Eoin

smccarrick wrote: »

Depends on how the browser tries to display the page- some browsers are optimised for mobile devices- others try to scale the regular page (which is where snarl-ups most frequently occur). Safari and Firefox showing regular rather than optimised pages are the normal culprits, Opera seems to be a lot more stable- though its a bitch viewing the non-optimised pages. Then again- vBulletin is optimised (thats not to say it presents as optimised- which it often doesn't).

S.

That's interesting, and it does sound like justification to enforce it.

I think at one stage "left-aligned only" was suggested purely for aesthetic reasons, which is why I thought it was a stupid rule.

Winters

http://m.boards.ie ?
I dont see any avatars or signatures when browsing on Opera Mini and using the proper boards mobile pages, and it is lovely and speedy quick. If people have a problem with signatures or avatars the option is there to turn them off. If you are on a narrowband or a mobile connection using avatrs and signatures when browsing any forum is just silly and a waste of bandwidth, they are just an optional extra.

Ive browsed boards on Opera (QUI Symbion) and Opera Mini on my P1, Safari on the iPhone and also on the Asus EEE's and never had a problem with signatures being aligned in any sort of way. Id just turn them off when browsing mobile anyway. Maybe a skin that would suit inbetween the mobile and full skin for smaller more portable devices might be a good option?

As for animated signatures and avatrs? I dont see the point, seems childish to me. If your life goal is to have an avatar of some tart with big huge bolders bouncing under your username then you might aswell just kill yourself. A shimmer on some poorly compressed gif of some crap boy racer car under your post reeks of the internet back in 1999 when a spinning mailbox was commonplace on sites. Feck off with animated crap.

The problem with signatues is that people are being too anal about it. Sure there are size limits for people using 300px by 150px images or whatever but whats about people who have a wider but narrower' iamge, say 450px by 50px. Whats wrong with that? The only harm it is doing is decrasing the whitespace used to the right of the page and having no damaging effect on the browsing expierance.

Quotes? I will admit the bbcode for quotes is quite large, why not remove the ability to use

in signatures? Or if its possbile (I dont know VB too great) to have it so it uses a different formatter even, something smaller.

I think smccarrick hit the nail on the head when he brought up the fact about "sigpo". Seriously, a pm from some random user on boards means absolute jack shít to most users. If I got a pm from some random user I would ignore it or maybe offer a whitty response of some sort. It is pointless.

The sigpo thing really started off as a joke, just a name for people who reproted signatures and tbh, most people had fun with it and didnt take it seriously. If someone spotted a signature that was too large just post in the thread to bring it to peoples attention. But nobody likes certain boards users who appear to go out of their way spending every waking moment making sure each and everyones signature conformed exactly to rules like some sort of nazi regimented dress camp. Nobody has a problem with people reporting an obvious screen rape, but some common sense is needed, and less KY.

tl;dr, even for myself

Cabaal

MAYBE animated avatars
NO animated sigs
maybe larger sigs

Anything else will turn boards.ie super spammy and that hurts children, kittens and baby jesus

Dades

Joking aside, perhaps we should see what the DAFT effect will be before allowing more imagery.

Winters

Dades wrote: »

Joking aside, perhaps we should see what the DAFT effect will be before allowing more imagery.

As long as it doesn't mean an annoying pop-up and horrible slide show thing to see images :pac:

The_Conductor

Dades wrote: »

Joking aside, perhaps we should see what the DAFT effect will be before allowing more imagery.

Our property related forums (we have several) are far better developed and moderated than DAFTs)- so it could very well be that some (or all) of their forums may be migrated over to us- possibly with mirroring or redirects from the main DAFT website? It will of course be an admin decision.

DeVore

Er... there are no plans along those lines and I'm not sure what the "DAFT effect" is

No animation. Not now, and probably not ever. This is a site for discussion, which means reading which I find a lot harder when something on the screen is screaming "LOOK AT ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!".

(Biko, omg, that is about the most annoying thing I've ever seen hahah!)

ROot, your sig is 18k and looks great tbh, I dont think we really need an increase in file size. We allow people to over run the physical dimension from time to time so long as they arent taking the mick.

DeV.

R0ot

DeVore wrote: »

ROot, your sig is 18k and looks great tbh,

It's a zero btw. :pac:

seamus

R0ot wrote: »

It's a zero btw. :pac:

Not for long it isn't....

DeVore

seamus wrote: »

Not for long it isn't....

hahaha, I cant do that now but its soooooooooooooo tempting.

DeV.

R0ot

DeVore wrote: »

hahaha, I cant do that now but its soooooooooooooo tempting.

DeV.

DeV

Kinetic^

NO wai for animated sigs/avatars!! They're so irritating. Not bothered on increase of size.