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Text signatures, one or two lines high, tops.  No images.

60 (15.3%)

Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  No images.

100 (25.5%)

Text signatures, 7-15 lines tall.  No images.

19 (4.8%)

Unrestricted text signatures.  No images.

15 (3.8%)

Text signatures, one or two lines high, tops.  Cap image height at ~60 pixels.

13 (3.3%)

Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~60 pixels.

67 (17.1%)

Text signatures, 7-15 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~60 pixels.

9 (2.3%)

Unrestricted text signatures.  Cap image height at ~60 pixels.

3 (0.8%)

Text signatures, one or two lines high, tops.  Cap image height at ~100 pixels.

3 (0.8%)

Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~100 pixels.

49 (12.5%)

Text signatures, 7-15 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~100 pixels.

18 (4.6%)

Unrestricted text signatures.  Cap image height at ~100 pixels.

3 (0.8%)

Text signatures, one or two lines high, tops.  Cap image height at ~150 pixels.

0 (0%)

Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~150 pixels.

7 (1.8%)

Text signatures, 7-15 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~150 pixels.

4 (1%)

Unrestricted text signatures.  Cap image height at ~150 pixels.

8 (2%)

Text signatures, one or two lines high, tops.  Images as big as the sky.

1 (0.3%)

Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  Images as big as the sky.

0 (0%)

Text signatures, 7-15 lines tall.  Images as big as the sky.

0 (0%)

Unrestricted text signatures.  Images as big as the sky.

13 (3.3%)

Total Members Voted: 392

[commondragon]

Images go in the avatar. Text goes in the sig. This makes the most sense in terms of compactness of display, since there's a lot of otherwise-wasted space in the avatar slot.

If you really need to show an image that doesn't fit in the avatar area, you can make a post for it. Other forums I've been on have often ended up having a gallery/art-oriented subforum for this kind of thing.

Having a gallery/art-oriented subforum will not help any.  Unless people are going to post their links to the subforum into their signature, it's going to do little, if any, help to those who want images in their signatures.  People would rather not just click a link to a post full of random pictures elseware in the forum.  A signature doesnt have to be ALL text.
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In my humble opinion, the problem with signature images isn't the width, height or frequency but rather the nature of the image itself. MaxVance's very DF-esque image doesn't bother me in the slightest, 1. but an image with the same exact dimensions could just be the colors magenta, yellow and cyan repeating to no end. There could be lens-flares and all sorts of madness, and there's no way to regulate the contents of the image outside of dimensions and file-size.
On the other hand, 2. Avatars appear to the left of a post and are easily ignored- the only time you need to see them is when you look at the user's name. In fact, they can be used to identify the user and are in this way rather handy. Signature images are sighted between each post and tend to dwarf the messages themselves.[/b]

1. Wrong, the admins/moderators can specify guidlines on signature image content, even to that extent.
2. If someone feels the need to take someone's signature into account in their posts, then obviously they will make themselves look stupid when replying in serious discussions.
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I just felt like posting that.  Also, I think it would be very fitting to have ASCII signatures, it would give the sig-makers something more to be proud of than just adding filters to a landscape.

I like the ASCII sigs that some members have-but i dont want animated buffalos jumping into bowls of pudding. No images.

1. Not everyone is skilled at ASCII.  Do you want alot of horrible ASCII signatures everywere?
2. If your afraid of buffalos jumping into pudding, you need professional help, while in the meantime you can ignore it or turn off signature/avatar images.  Besides, if your wanting to avoid stupidity, it can still appear in the avatar.
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Now, animated (.gif) sigs and avatars are IMHO just attention- and time- wasters.

Its only an attention/time waster if you give it the attention/time.
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And that's fine. His sig is reasonably clever, but there's no need for us to see it on every post he makes. After the first time you see it, it just becomes so much visual noise, like a banner ad.

While the example you gave in the rest of your post (not posted to conserve space) is one of the few things a subforum will help with, people who are bothered with "visual noise" can just suck up and deal with it.  This isnt a forum for two-year-olds, so you can resist being distracted by seeing someone's avatar for the thirteenth time in a heated forum discussion.  So how is it different with a signature?  You could apply your words to the text in people's signatures aswell, so why havent you suggested that we allow people to make collections of quotes in your "art gallery subforum" aswell?


Im starting to rant now, plus this post is rather long :p

[Draco18s]

Thumbs up to that.  I thank you for pointing out all the stupidness in one fowl swoop.

I mean, honestly.  There are signatures I see 100 times before I actually look at them and go "oh hey, that's neat!"

[Sergius]

I think a small signature is the way to go. This is about the only valid complaint I've seen, that posts sometimes take less than the signature size, thus spamming the forum (on the other hand, some people would call one-liners in your reply, bad manners. and don't get me started on quoting entire page-long posts with pictures and captions and footnotes just to say "Amen bro!"). I've seen forums that suffer the same but in the "Avatar side", even if it's not the poster's fault. One forum I visit has all sort of dumb and useless D&D stats on the left sidebar, so even if you post a single line you get a huge empty box of post.

So yeah, I'd say keep the pictures small, OR a small 6-line sig (not BOTH!), try to use a small font if possible. The forum can filter out quantitatively but not qualitatively (so while it can get rid of signatures that are N lines long or pics that are N pixels high, it can't filter out graphic content), this means the mods will still need to ban sigs on a case by case basis.

[Kagus]

And for that, I compliment you on your ability to ignore signature images.  Not everyone has that, so you are indeed gifted.

I had to turn off avatar display because I was having trouble seeing the actual name of the person rather than the image.  If signature images are allowed, I'm going to have to turn off that too otherwise I won't be able to pay as much attention to the posts.


And, as I said before, it's not that I have to look at the image tagged onto a user, it's that I have to deal with the mentality that goes along with it.  I'd like to bring up one of the "bad forums" from my own experience, the PVKII forums.

When I first joined, I had no images associated with my name.  Whenever I tried to join into a discussion, the regulars refused to give my posts any weight because I did not have either an impressive signature (preferably animated), or an avatar (again, preferably animated). 

So I made myself an avatar in Gmod.  It was a rough thing that wasn't exactly easy on the eyes, but it had a goblin ragdoll making a rather amusing expression (and wearing shades).  I was not given a whole lot more importance.

I went on to make more pictures and a sig, all of which were clever but none of which were the flashy "HEY I'M A SIG!" images that apparently controlled rank. 


You can say now that that's not going to happen here, but it is.  I'm sure that, eventually, both signatures and avatars are going to be permanently allowed.  Once that's in place, the sig/avatar mentality will grow and we'll be strutting the images that we were so skillful in finding and then linking to in our sigs, and treating those without images as slightly inferior.


I guess when that happens, I'll just have to find another indy community.

[Elvenshae]

I honestly cannot comprehend the people who want no pictures and strict line limits on .sigs because "then this forum will turn into Gaia-land" or whatever it is.

Be honest, folks: does anyone actually see that happening?  Did anyone see any obnoxiously long .sigs on the previous incarnation of these boards?

I didn't think so.

So, there's really no reason to restrict people to "1 or 2 lines." Seriously, 1 or 2 lines?  What are you so freakin' afraid of?  This?

--Patryn of Elvenshae
--Enjoying DF since XX
--Magma Pipes a Specialty!

Ooh!  Tremble with how ridiculous that would be in a .sig!  Live in fear of

Code: [Select]

_
@_   d  Hah! I'm on the other side of this channel and you can't reach me!
 _
That being said, there are two good features I've seen on other boards, which might warrant inclusion on this one if possible:

1. Signatures only appear once per page, on the first post by a user.  So, if you and Joe Blow are in a heated debate, your .sig will appear in post 1, and Joe's will appear in post 2, and they wont appear in the thread again until it hits page 2.

2. As an addendum to the Show / Supress .sigs option in your profile, you can pick a maximum line length for displayed .sigs.  That way, everyone who absolutely can't stand more than 2 lines of .sig (sigh) can set it up that way.

[commondragon]

one option I ask to consider adding to the forum is the option to turn off signatures in specific areas of the forum, if possible.

That would make many people happy.  Im sure it can be done somehow...

Also, I might dig up a script for people who want collections of quotes/mod links in their posts by making a "click-to make text box" link, although if forced for images, would basically be as useless as the subforum.

ALSO
@Kagus: Fear of stupidity and single mindedness are no reason to deprive people of forum features.  Forums are not made to entertain people with EVERY POST, so if they feel the need that everyone's avatar or signature must appeal to them, it is their loss for having the mentality of a spoiled toddler.

[Crnobog]

Image sigs are pointless and retarded, but we can turn them off completely from the profile settings, so I don't see any problem

[Tylui]

Hi there.  A lot of you seem to be pretty confused about things.

This is the year 2008.  We are not a group of primitive cavemen unable to express our individuality.

Avatars and Signatures are a way of expressing ourselves, or identifying ourselves.  Whether this is done in text or in a graphical representation, it's still the same concept.

Most of us have some pretty decent computers capable of viewing such graphical representations of someone's expressions(these expressions are sometimes called "art", but the representations themselves are called "images").  We don't surf the internet using DOS.

I forgot where I was going with that train of thought, but I have a better train:

I play Dwarf Fortress, as most of us do.  From that we can assume two things about myself(And, by inference Yourselves as well):

1) Obviously, I don't mind looking at just text.  But!  That doesn't count when I'm reading forums.  I find it muuuch easier to identify who's posting what when there are images in avatars and signatures.

2) I've got a large capacity for creativity and imagination.  Somehow these things need to be expressed in everything I do.

3) I understand the value that some small object can represent.  For example, the at sign on screen means a whooole lot more to me than just "@".  He's an adventurer named Urist Forkedtongues, and he's got some swimming skills and exploded a dragon's head by throwing some sand at it.  A loooot of information is represented by that little At Sign, much the way that some certain images can contain a lot of information that would be rather lengthy to explain, if explanation is required.     <-- Try to describe that emotion in 3 textual characters.

4) I enjoy my freedoms and choices.  Dwarf Fortress is a really open game.  You can do an incredible amount of stuff, and you're hardly bounded by rules or the like.  I shouldn't have to be without a signature and avatar simply because someone's restricted by bandwidth issues, or because they're annoying to them.


As far as solutions go, incessant adding options to the forum code is probably something Toady doesn't want to do, and, if he's unfamiliar with PHP code(even if it is), it can be a looot more troublesome to do than many people realize.  Easier said than done, I suppose.

There is a solution that you can do yourselves, in fact, and rather easily.

Every mainstream browser has a way to edit your personal CSS sheets for every webpage you're on.  Well!  This is handy, because I'm a web developer and can talk you through the steps to disabling images in signatures on your own.  I'll even post a thread about it, if images are allowed at the end of this all.

[E. Albright]

A reminder that for those arguing that there's no reason whatever to restrict image sigs: we can't selectively turn them off, so it's all sigs or no sigs. On a board for a user-modded game, sigs are very often links to a particular user's contribution to the community. Disabling sigs deprives us access to that. Allowing sigs with images (to say nothing of unrestricted images) forces us to have conversations arbitrarily broken up by images entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and possibly larger than the post they're attached to. Further, if we're "blessed" with a slow connection, that's an extra bandwidth hit for very little in return. The only other (default) option for those of us who don't want random images inserted into the content we're reading would be forgoing any and all links in text sigs, as well as everything else that might be therein.

Yes, we can mod the stylesheets and such, but I personally am not comfortable imposing that burden. I understand that image sigs allow for richer expression of "who you are", but that's generally not relevant to most things you'll write. Image sigs, unless modded out, mean more bandwidth and longer posts in exchange for something which most of us will skip over w/o examining after the first time (of probably many), assuming we examine it even then.

[umiman]

Elvenshae: A lot of people don't see logic. Only exaggeration of myth. It's quite worthless speaking sense to them because they will subconsciously reject your entire post to the point of completely erasing it from their memory on the grounds that:

1. It doesn't support their argument
2. It makes sense and they can't counter it

You'll find that the more insecure your fellow posters are, the more often this happens. I'm sure Toady has good judgment and will make the correct call though. It should be worth noting that whatever Toady does, it wouldn't make a damn of a difference since everyone would shut up and accept it; occasionally going once every 500 or so signatures, "SEE I TOLD YOU SO BLARGARGLGLG!!!!"

My personal viewpoint is hate for any signature image larger than 15x200. So I'd be one of those going "SEE I TOLD YOU SO BLASFDSGSDVG!!!!"

[Tylui]

A reminder that for those arguing that there's no reason whatever to restrict image sigs: we can't selectively turn them off, so it's all sigs or no sigs. On a board for a user-modded game, sigs are very often links to a particular user's contribution to the community.

You're right, they are often links to contributions.  But then again, so are image links.  Which are more easily identified with things, once they've been viewed, and the user can identify what that image stands for.

Allowing sigs with images (to say nothing of unrestricted images) forces us to have conversations arbitrarily broken up by images entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and possibly larger than the post they're attached to.

Like text signatures DON'T break up the discussions?

Actually, I rather like it when images break up discussions.  It adds the negative space, and tends to help keep peoples' thoughts separate from each other.  Plus, again, you can tell who wrote what a little easier.

Further, if we're "blessed" with a slow connection, that's an extra bandwidth hit for very little in return.

You can cache your images.  And then you'll only have to load the image the first time you see it.  Besides, unless the person is uploading BMPs(which I'd bet is disallowed), the pictures will be very small in byte-size, especially if also limited to a certain height.  Compression is amazing these days, and usually a JPG about 200 pixels high by 400 wide is going to be ~70 kb...  With a 56k modem, that's probably about 2 extra seconds.  It'd be disastrous to lose that much time of my life.  I could have spent it sneezing, damnit!

I understand that image sigs allow for richer expression of "who you are", but that's generally not relevant to most things you'll write.

Oh yeah, you know, because when I write something in a forum community, I'd rather just have people ignore who wrote it.  I'd rather be an anonymous person who randomly contributes to communities with no recognition for who I am.  I'm glad to know that who I am has exactly no relevance to whatever I write.

Image sigs, unless modded out, mean more bandwidth and longer posts in exchange for something which most of us will skip over w/o examining after the first time (of probably many), assuming we examine it even then.

Those people who have bandwidth issues can easily make it not a bandwidth issue by enabling cached images.  If you don't have the harddrive space for that, or whatnot, then why are you playing DF?

If you're just going to skip over the signatures anyway, then why all the fuss?  I suppose this point can be argued either way, but I think that it's perfectly possible to ignore them.  So allow them, and those that'll ignore them will do so.

[Derakon]

Your identity is tied to your name. Avatars and signatures can both easily be imitated, so you can't count on them to uniquely identify yourself. And yeah, that's a pretty jerkish thing to do (and if someone stole my avatar, I could sue them for copyright infringement if I really wanted to). I'm just saying that you shouldn't tie your identity online to the decorations you get to put on your posts. Remember that first and foremost, you're here to interact with other people. Anything beyond that is secondary, and if it gets in the way, then we should seriously consider if it's worth having.

There's some value in avatars, as, as noted, they don't get in the way much and provide a usually-reliable visual shorthand for identifying people. There's value in terse-but-informative signatures that contain information you might reasonably want to look up about the user. But what's the value in having grandiose signatures with images? You aren't expressing yourself - you have to be consciously inserting that content for it to be an act of expression. That's why I keep saying that the creativity people want to put into sigs would be better-placed in an art subforum. Big signatures, and especially visually-distracting signatures, just interfere with our ability to communicate with each other, which is, ultimately, what forums are about.

I don't buy the "you can turn off images via CSS" argument, largely because it's not a reasonable action to expect anyone not familiar with CSS to take, even if a guide is provided.

[Grek]

I voted: Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~60 pixels.

If a message cannot be expressed with 6 lines of text and an avatar sized picture, it needs it's own post.

[Kagus]

Like text signatures DON'T break up the discussions?

Actually, I rather like it when images break up discussions.  It adds the negative space, and tends to help keep peoples' thoughts separate from each other.  Plus, again, you can tell who wrote what a little easier.

Okay, you have stated that text sigs do break up discussions (which they can quite easily), and that you like having discussion broken up a bit.  What then, is the advantage of an image?

Oh yeah, you know, because when I write something in a forum community, I'd rather just have people ignore who wrote it.  I'd rather be an anonymous person who randomly contributes to communities with no recognition for who I am.  I'm glad to know that who I am has exactly no relevance to whatever I write.

Who you are should have no impact on the importance or validity of your opinion...  If it does, then it is and indication of user bias.  User bias generally isn't a great thing.

You can cache your images.  And then you'll only have to load the image the first time you see it.  Besides, unless the person is uploading BMPs(which I'd bet is disallowed), the pictures will be very small in byte-size, especially if also limited to a certain height.  Compression is amazing these days, and usually a JPG about 200 pixels high by 400 wide is going to be ~70 kb...  With a 56k modem, that's probably about 2 extra seconds.  It'd be disastrous to lose that much time of my life.  I could have spent it sneezing, damnit!

Those people who have bandwidth issues can easily make it not a bandwidth issue by enabling cached images.  If you don't have the harddrive space for that, or whatnot, then why are you playing DF?

I fail to see the reasoning behind telling one side of an argument to stop trying to enforce restrictions on you, and then coming around and enforcing your own restrictions on them...  Why should all the 56k-ers spend hard disk space in order to cache your absolutely essential artistic expression?  If it even is your artistic expression, and not just something you found somewhere?

If you're just going to skip over the signatures anyway, then why all the fuss?  I suppose this point can be argued either way, but I think that it's perfectly possible to ignore them.  So allow them, and those that'll ignore them will do so.

Avatars and signatures are not made to go unnoticed...  Bright colors and contrast, even when not animated, still draw the human eye.  Especially when backed by the relatively dark and soft tones in the Darkling theme.  I suppose I could train my eye to not notice them, but that's another thing that would be forced upon those who don't have a fondness for sigs.

And as for this argument about using sigs and avatars to identify a poster...  Why can't I just read the name that is attached to every post?  The name changes far less often than the avatar or the sig.


Look at us...  We're fighting and insulting each other like there's a holy war going on...  They're just images, dammit!  Why is everyone getting so worked up?  I mean, calling everyone who doesn't agree insecure or paranoid?  Totalitarian or irritable?  This is passing beyond silly and venturing into downright bad...  What's a close-knit community compared to Images vs. No Images? 

Not much, apparently.

[Tylui]

<Insignificant angry blathering>

Warning - while you were typing 2 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Eep!

@Kagus

Yeah... You're right about the community being ripped apart over it.

The issue is BASICALLY no images vs hueg eyehurting, page expanding images.
Small images seems to be the compromise: "Text signatures, 3-6 lines tall.  Cap image height at ~60 pixels." seems to be rather fair.

Ultimately, I think that Toady should just make a decision regardless of what we think;  I know that we'll all adhere to it, some of us will grumble, but I doubt that anyone would be hurt enough to leave.  And if they did...  I suppose they wouldn't be doing the community much harm in doing so.  Fighting about it, on the other hand, seems to be taking quite the toll on it.