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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

[Narushima]

Why is there this "remove vote" option ? I don't think it's a good idea, some people surely will always just follow the mass, and change their votes according to it. And that's not what a poll is about.

[Torak]

I must have my old, uncut signature back.

It just isn't the same without those last few lines.

[Skanky]

I voted no images, 1-2 lines of text, but thinking about it now, I could easily be happy with up to 6 lines of text provided every man and his dog doesn't fill their entire allocated space with text. I would say I am strongly against image signatures and apathetic towards length of text in signatures.

To me, a forum thread reads like a conversation. An image stuck between each post is like a few seconds of silence between comments in a real conversation - it is disconcerting and breaks the flow. Due to their nature, images do this in a way that text cannot.

Finally, my (admittedly small) sampling of forums with image signatures has given me the impression that forums with image signatures leads to posts like "lol u suk" while forums without image signatures leads to intelligent discourse, deep analysis of the game and sunshine and happiness. Even here with an issue that is "dividing the community", the discussion has still been quite civil.

[Mikademus]

To me, a forum thread reads like a conversation. An image stuck between each post is like a few seconds of silence between comments in a real conversation - it is disconcerting and breaks the flow. Due to their nature, images do this in a way that text cannot.

For me too fora have a conversational flow, but signatures I find useful since they help me identify the speaker without moving my eyes to the avatars, which breaks the flow of reading. Also, I am a visual person, and a sig and/or ava helps me identify the speaker better than his forum moniker.

Basically, this forum has no morons with humongous signatures, so allowing image sigs here wouldn't be a problem. If this was a board for discussing current American domestic politics on the other hand...

[Draco18s]

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?

People with bandwith issues SHOULD be enabling the caching of images due to the sheer improved performance of frequently visiting sites.  15 seconds now means 0 seconds forever after.

On that note, I--with a glorious uni connection and a FiOs connection at home--have browser caching turned on because it means that pages load in 1/50th of a second instead of 1/2.  That extra time means that my mouse moves to one location for a link, only to have a picture load and push the link off somewhere else.

[Toady One]

Regarding vote removal, I think it's important that people who read this thread and change their minds about their initial selection should be allowed to do so.  This ability outweighs any psychological effect from people seeing the vote results and then changing their anonymous vote to somehow fit in in their own minds, or something.  I doubt it's an issue, though I've been surprised by psych research in the past, and even if it's a substantial percentage, it's a trial those people should be allowed to overcome while not curtailing the freedom of other people to make a more informed decision.

[MaxVance]

Finally, my (admittedly small) sampling of forums with image signatures has given me the impression that forums with image signatures leads to posts like "lol u suk" while forums without image signatures leads to intelligent discourse, deep analysis of the game and sunshine and happiness. Even here with an issue that is "dividing the community", the discussion has still been quite civil.

This sort of thinking is a problem I see in many places around the Internet. Instead of letting stupid people stay around and aggravate us, I have a simpler solution: ban them. This leaves the avenue of signature images open to mature users and scares away the kiddies.

[Gaulgath]

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.

You might want to put some salt on that slippery slope of yours. Someone might get hurt.

I don't understand why there is even an argument here. People have the option to disable signatures. I guess there's some hidden problem that I'm missing. But if the community as a whole truly believes images in signatures - I personally do not believe they are distracting at all - then a compromise of around four to six lines of text would be enough for some ASCII art, should someone want to express themselves in such a manner.

[Eagleon]

Really to me it just breaks my concentration when there are images in signatures. I generally don't read forums that have them for very long. They're nice, sure, and if I weren't so easily distracted, I'd probably be advocating them myself But I'd be sad to see every other post have an enormous animated banner. That and I kind of agree with Skanky. The forums I've seen with images in their sigs have tended to be rather nasty.

Further, I'm of the firm opinion that a policy of high moderation leads to more problems in atmosphere than it's worth, since a bad atmosphere leads to more instances that need moderation. Once you start banning people for "being stupid" it's hard to set a limit, and while signatures are indeed another form of expression, the content of a forum's posts should really be what matters. There are lots of places to put art, and people tend to start to bicker wherever it's shown, so it doesn't seem conductive to regular discussion to have them floating around every time you speak.

[Janus]

The forums I've seen with images in their sigs have tended to be rather nasty.

Like the current argument, you mean? 

[Skanky]

I have a simpler solution: ban them.

This ignores the fact that we currently have only two mods, and extra time spent modding means less time spent improving the game.

People have the option to disable signatures. I guess there's some hidden problem that I'm missing.

2 off the top of my head: 1: Turning off signatures is all or nothing. If sig image are allowed, you either have a choice of text and image signatures or nothing at all. Not too good for the many people who like text signatures. 2: Allowing sig images may change the tone of the forum. Changing how you view the forums has no effect whatsoever on the behaviour of others on the forum.

Like the current argument, you mean?

Not even close. 

[MaxVance]

I have a simpler solution: ban them.

This ignores the fact that we currently have only two mods, and extra time spent modding means less time spent improving the game.

Toady already spends much of his time reading the forums. I'm sure banning a person involves only a few clicks on his part.

[Surma]

I'm sure that someone could whip up a mod for SMF that would allow individual users to disable images in signatures. Then we could have the best of both worlds those who want images in their signatures could have them, and those who don't have the option of not seeing them.

[SilverDwarf]

I voted for text signatures because I think images break up perfectly good conversations and many can be an eyesore. Text sigs suit the forum and also suit the games. I really enjoy looking at an text sig of an adventurer fighting a goblin or being dismembered in some way.

I used to be against not having avatars but now that i've seen some of the ones that people come up with I enjoy looking at them. This forum has a great feel to it already, please don't change it by allowing images in signatures.

[Faces of Mu]

Good on you, Toady, for putting this up for vote! In the spirit of Toady-programming, I would be happy for any of these options if all of them were available in the raws, er, options. Consumer control probably gives the best win/win. I also really liked the extra idea of having signatures only show in the user's last post of the thread.

However, given I don't know if any of these options really exist, I've voted for 1-2 lines, and no image. Until a few months ago I was on dial-up, and repeated animated signatures really reduced my capacity to participate in forums (as either lurker or poster).

I may not be attuned to the spirit of forum-posting, but signatures to me are meant to be the concise personal touch at the end of your message, not the message itself. If you've got something to say, or you want to be known, put it in your message! Not gif after gif after gif after gif after gif...
 
However, I'd still vote for avatars. Just for that mnemonic reason of being able to associate opinions with images and user names (tho the option to see or not see, to show or not show, is best!).