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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

[Slartibartfast]

Just because you call someone a "self-absorbed myopic" instead of "a tool" does not mean it isn't flaming, it just means you have a richer vocabulary.

[Draco18s]

As has Aquillion already explained:
1) There are already disadvantages to signature images (Whether you see them or not).  [and so there would actually have to be an advantage to them to balance the disadvantages.]
2) No images was the previous consensus, if you want to change the consensus you should have good reasons and support. (both of which are lacking)

1) An argument is non-supportive if proved wrong or proved insignificant.  I believe we have done that for all disadvantages of sig images where such can be based in fact.

2) Previous consensus?  First, What previous consensus, and second, opinions change and sometimes new people show up and swing the vote.  If "previous consensus" was any basis for voting then we wouldn't need to vote every 4 years.  Same dude would rule for 8, then he'd leave and be replaced by another member of the same party, afterall, that was the previous consensus, wasn't it?

[Kagus]

The forum change wasn't four years ago.  It wasn't even four weeks ago.  We were all banding together to make it through to the next forum, and the issue of signature images came up.  Almost all of those involved said that they didn't need/want signature images on the new forum.  Including you, Draco.

I'm still not entirely sure what sparked the change in opinion, although it might have been the addition of avatars.  Maybe users, after seeing the colorful and sometimes custom images used as avatars, decided that they really did want signature images to go along with them.  I don't know.


As for having faith in the Bay12 forumites and their ability to retain civility and decency after allowing sigs, I would like to bring up Mikademus' tired, beaten post again.

You know who you are: I throw a venomous lol in your face. Shrug or wipe it off, still know that you're being laughed at for being fanatics in a silly crusade. Intarweb fights for da win.

What worries me most about this is not what he's saying, but how he's saying it.  "Venomous lol", "intarweb", "for da win". 

This is not Bay12.  This is internet subculture.  This is memespeak and n00btongue.  This is exactly what I was afraid of.

[Gaulgath]

Such memes have been used on the forum long since the upgrade.  As much as you may be loathe to admit it, Bay12 is still on the internet, and such things are bound to slip out from time to time, especially in heated arguments such as this one. Take a look at the forums, and you'll see the forum software has not turned the members into terrible monsters. One relatively... well... derogatory post is not evidence for forum-wide decline in civility.

Personally, I think this topic should be locked and buried deep beneath the Earth. Just go with the majority vote. I'm not precisely happy that Janus' mod won't be used, but as long as we can just stop arguing about this and continue with our normal forum-going life.

[Mikademus]

Just because you call someone a "self-absorbed myopic" instead of "a tool" does not mean it isn't flaming, it just means you have a richer vocabulary.

True. I self-assess my post as
Flamage: 50/100
Relevance: 75/100
Trolling: 25/100

Ymmv,

What worries me most about this is not what he's saying, but how he's saying it.  "Venomous lol", "intarweb", "for da win". 

This is not Bay12.  This is internet subculture.  This is memespeak and n00btongue.  This is exactly what I was afraid of.

This is sarcasm. If you're lucky you'll learn to recognise it. Other here do. Also, I have to date never seen any internet l33t kid use the compound "venomous lol". But watch "Clockwork Orange" sometime and you may see the worth of creative neologisms.

[slMagnvox]

Mikademus, at the very least you should change your title to quite vocally judging you.  amirite?  Hah.

Oh hell, since I am here.  Surma suggested that tileset authors would benefit, and the community would benefit, from being allowed to post their tilesets as sig images.  And while I kinda sympathize that would be a constructive use of the feature I still don't feel like it would be something that required appending to every single one of that user's posts.  Even if just inserting a short little comment, maybe in a thread completely unrelated to tilesets, I don't see the utility of even such a positive sig image.

[Aquillion]

There is still no answer to this.  Nobody has explained why they feel the need to use every post they make -- even on barely-related subjects -- to advertise their creations, or to post the same once-clever joke a thousand times until it has been run into the ground, or whatever it is they intend to use their sigs for (go ahead, tell me if it's something else!  I don't know.) 

I did, but you conveniently forgot this.

Unless I'm reading the wrong reason (correct me if you gave a better one), your argument was that you needed them to "express" yourself.

Again, the question isn't "why do you need to post images", but "why do you need to post the same image in every single post."  You can post any clever dwarf-fortress pictures you make in their own thread in the Off Topic forum, or whatever; nobody is talking about limiting the things you can express in this thread, only how you can express them.

Why do you have to post the same image over and over and over, instead of just once?  That is the real question.

1) An argument is non-supportive if proved wrong or proved insignificant.  I believe we have done that for all disadvantages of sig images where such can be based in fact.

Naturally, if you accepted my arguments as valid and significant, you probably wouldn't disagree with me, at least not so sharply.  But I think enough people consider them significant to require discussion.  We want the forum to be friendly to as many people as possible, not just to a bare majority or whatever.

Which in the context of this thread basically states "I'm not objecting to images in signatures, I'm objecting to images in signatures."  ;P (that's smilie should be taken as a more happy 'tongue' image, more jovial and such)

Not exactly.  You said (to paraphrase) "the anti-image people are only worried about theoretical awful image-sigs that will rarely happen; most image sigs will not be as awful as they say!"  My point was that I, at least, am not objecting to any individual theoretical image sig, but to the way in which image sigs work, inherently -- to the concept of appending the same image to every single post you make.  The quality or theoretical usefulness of the images within them is unimportant to me, since I feel that after seeing them for the thousandth time even the most clever image banner becomes grating, and that the 'visual style' of a page with a large number of image banners and the like -- no matter how good they are individually -- is therefore of low quality.

[Narushima]

60 + 7 + 3 + 3 + 45 + 18 + 4 + 6 + 3 + 7 + 12 = 168 for some sort of image,
54 + 86 + 18 + 12 = 170  for no images at all.

It's not fair to count like that. There's more propositions with "yes to images" inside than "no images" ones. you can't compare two things when they're just not on a same level.
That being said, I'd like to ask : why images ? Why for ? We lived in the old forums with just text signatures, and we were all right, weren't we ?

[Mikademus]

Unless I'm reading the wrong reason (correct me if you gave a better one), your argument was that you needed them to "express" yourself.

The scare quotes are telling: obviously, "expressing" oneself is bad in your world. Since you can interpret me however you like so I can do of you.

Anyway, to help you open your horisons a bit, people are not only on fora to write and read text. Establishing an online identity is also important, even existentially critical for some. Sigs help with this, and I like to assign identities to the people behind the posts.

Now stop cherry-picking your interpretations and employing hand-wavery in your argumentation and your posts would be more valid to people who conceptualise structures rather than just go "aaaaw, text, lots! he smaaaart!". 

(Note: ^ short post. No wall of text.)

[E. Albright]

I'm not a fantatic, but I get really riled up by internet holier-than-thouism. And honestly, it doesn't matter how you phrase yourself in this kind of situation.

Actually, yes it does. A lot. This coming from someone who has been involved with research on the impact of rhetorical strategies and discourse styles in online communication. The above is flat-out wrong.

Since I actually don't really care about this (or if you believe that statement) I at least got more personal entertainment from telling you what you are.

This is a troubling statement. It implies that you are arguing not to convince us of something you believe in, but to "stir the pot". I.e., to troll. Even if I am misreading that, and it doesn't mean that, you're at least confessing to being being uncivil instead of civil because it amuses you to do so. This is... um... bad.

Anyway, to help you open your horisons a bit, people are not only on fora to write and read text. Establishing an online identity is also important, even existentially critical for some. Sigs help with this, and I like to assign identities to the people behind the posts.

Ahem. Allow me to attempt to broaden your horizons. There are different types of forums on the Internet, with different aims and different communities. Not all afford the same mechanisms to establish perceived identity and community membership, and not all place the same value on these things; a purely social forum places more value on "identity" than, say, a political or technical forum where there is a central topic that can be discussed objectively (or not ). However, these social aspects do exist in essentially all online environments. Having said this, image sigs are neither necessary nor sufficient for fulfilling them. In pure-text environments, people assign an identity to others by reading and remembering what they say over time.

Now stop cherry-picking your interpretations and employing hand-wavery in your argumentation and your posts would be more valid to people who conceptualise structures rather than just go "aaaaw, text, lots! he smaaaart!".

(Note: ^ short post. No wall of text.)

I am not sure how to respond to this. It's hostile and condescending. It is also, I might add, a fine example of hand-waving: "your posts are long; long posts are a sign of a pretentious mind attempting to bamboozle the rubes; ergo, your posts can and should be dismissed out of hand". A short, concise post may make points very well or very poorly; likewise a long one. A perfunctory attempt to dismiss Aquillion's statements because they're not concise enough for your tastes would be best accompanied by an explanation of why a longer post in this context is a bad thing, something you pointedly omit.

This is all, you might note, a meta-discourse, and technically off-topic. Please do forgive me for dragging it out. But Mikademus, please try to be more civil. It'll help make your posts more convincing to people who don't share your point of view.

[MaxVance]

Holy cow, this has gone on for far too long. Just install Janus's original mod and get on with yourselves.

[Draco18s]

Almost all of those involved said that they didn't need/want signature images on the new forum.  Including you, Draco.

I'm afraid I was the opposite.  My second post in that thread I linked in 3 of my existing avatars and said,

Yes, there are retard icons out there (*cough*[image not available]*cough*) but I should think that DF Forum Goers can be expected to have a higher quality to their icons than that.

Third post says that there are ways to deal with image signatures if there is a problem with them, so neutral.  It was a response to the fear that the new forums would have problems with people using sig images, not weather or not I cared to see them.  Since then we've had someone make a mod to make them disappear, which is even better.

I'm not completely cynical yet, I still have hope for humanity on some level, and some groups have that level much higher.  For instance I know that enabling sig images as large as the sky here will not mean that people here will make an epilepsy inducing image 10,000 pixels tall (or other serious breach of netiquette--it still exists people!  Common Sense may be dead and buried, but netiquette is still kicking!).  Some troll might, but no currently active users here.  Until someone does otherwise I will continue to support sig images.

[Toady One]

I'm an inexperienced moderator.  It's true.  I realize now that blanket statements about chilling out, one of which I've made in this thread, don't mean very much, since it's quite easy to miss them in a thread and additionally, people might not interpret the statement as applying to their own conduct.  In light of this observation, and subsequent posts in this thread, I'd like to make a specific warning:

Mikademus, if you think an argument is futile and that no matter what tone you use, you just aren't capable of changing somebody's mind, or even if you think the other person has displayed an attitude you don't like or slighted you in some way, that doesn't mean it's time to be a jerk just because you enjoy insulting people.  That's simply not an acceptable reaction.  What's more, I know that you know that, and that you just don't care.  I'm giving you the opportunity to weigh your enjoyment of being a jerk against continued participation in other discussions.  Please consider this.


First of all, yeah, I'm sorry I downplayed the full forum experience objection a bit -- I had interpreted the references to unseen image signatures as being part of the community schism/doomsday issue, where I just mentioned it briefly without really discussing it.  You can click profiles to get sig references on a case-by-case basis, but I can see how that would be annoying if it keeps coming up.  It's a downside that needs to be weighed in with the total picture.

As far as opt-in vs. opt-out, I guess it depends on what you mean as far as the guest behavior.  I think, based on the objections so far, it's best to have the images disabled for guests (I think you'd still be able to see the signature if you clicked on a profile), since the votes are about even and the burden is, in my current view, larger on the no-image person at a public computer rather than an image person.  If by opt-out, we mean that signatures are on by default for members but not for guests, there's still this strange effect where a lurker joins the forums and then suddenly sees a bunch of signatures for the first time.  While this does have a humorous appeal as a kind of shock, it's not like I'd actually want to have it happen.  On the other hand, with an opt-in system, the question becomes one of awareness -- people should be encouraged to look at all of their profile options, etc., or they might not notice image signatures even exist.

On member numbers, I think there are around ~430 people with more than 100 posts, if you look at the members lists and sort by post order (click on posts, not that I want to encourage this...  I took displayed post counts by the posts as bad enough that they didn't even need a vote, though that's a bit of hypocrisy on my part I suppose -- same with the move tag marquee thing, sorry for being a dictator, he he he).  Some of those members have moved on, but reading the list, they are names I recognize.  And then there's all the ones with fewer than 100 posts as well, and many of them are still around.  Many of the 4500 accounts are unused though.

I don't remember exactly where, but I think somewhere in the welcome thread, we mentioned this signature poll.  I don't believe there was a prior consensus -- though certainly there were many posts against signature images and the prior state of the old forum was no image signatures even if for technical reasons.  I don't think this is a harmful process, but I apologize if people felt like they had assurances that it would be a certain way.  It was my initial intention to disallow signature images, and I think I even posted that somewhere, based on the posts I'd seen, and if you want to take that as a prior consensus that's fine, but with the ability to gather actual data from the larger community, I decided to use it.  I was surprised by the results myself, though that is in no way a bad thing.

I'm not sure how to detect sockpuppets in SMF polls.  I know I'd never run a poll like this based on something like DF feature requests, for example, because it's difficult to trust the process.  It seems like it's roughly working, given the breakdown of posts here, but I really couldn't be sure without more tools.

Regarding the doomsday/internet degeneracy scenario, I can't say that I know what would happen.  As the person in charge of making the decision, saying that I'm saving people from themselves by disallowing image signatures seems as if it would be condescending or paternalistic, and I can see how that can rub people the wrong way in this discussion.  Some stupid crap has undoubtedly happened here, but not all that much.  Yet at the same time, if I allow this sort of cultural divide using opt-ins, is saying "you know how to act on this forum" really sufficient anymore?  As Aquillion stated, if meme-sigs are allowed, wouldn't it be perfectly reasonable for a new poster to think that meme-image-responses to posts are natural?  How would they know without guidelines, given that such image posts are accepted behavior in many places?  I'm not sure it would be possible to rely on an implicit standard at that point.  Although lurk-first is often a guideline elsewhere, you can't expect someone with DF questions to lurk a long time before posting to get a feel for things.  This assumes that meme and other such sigs would be common, which is an unknown quantity.  There is a thread where a few people have posted their signatures, but it's a very small sample.  So I guess the question is -- given opt-in image signatures, do image objectors believe that posted guidelines would be sufficient to quell their concerns?  Please ignore the moderation burden at this point, as that can't be quantified based on our current information.  I've heard that posted guidelines might have a chilling effect -- I don't buy this in and of itself.  I believe heavy arbitrary moderation or complicated guidelines can have a chilling effect, but there are plenty of examples of forums where merry discussions occur despite posted rules.

Re: the silent majority, if they want things to remain the way they are, they should vote.  Many of those accounts are inactive, so I can't form an opinion based on them.

Personally, I think this topic should be locked and buried deep beneath the Earth. Just go with the majority vote.  I'm not precisely happy that Janus' mod won't be used, but as long as we can just stop arguing about this and continue with our normal forum-going life.

I don't think the discussion needs to be shut down.  People should relax though.  Janus's mod, in an opt-in format, is an option I'm considering at this point, though the discussion is still active.

[MaxVance]

As far as opt-in vs. opt-out, I guess it depends on what you mean as far as the guest behavior.  I think, based on the objections so far, it's best to have the images disabled for guests (I think you'd still be able to see the signature if you clicked on a profile), since the votes are about even and the burden is, in my current view, larger on the no-image person at a public computer rather than an image person.  If by opt-out, we mean that signatures are on my default for members but not for guests, there's still this strange effect where a lurker joins the forums and then suddenly sees a bunch of signatures for the first time.  While this does have a humorous appeal as a kind of shock, it's not like I'd actually want to have it happen.  On the other hand, with an opt-in system, the question becomes one of awareness -- people should be encouraged to look at all of their profile options, etc., or they might not notice image signatures even exist.

This is why I favor an opt-out over an opt-in system. Most people on these sorts of forums don't know just how customizable they are through user settings alone. Since having signature images on is the majority among forums these days, I think it would be better to just have them on by default. Those who dislike them will turn off the images when they register and never have to see them again.

I'm not sure how to detect sockpuppets in SMF polls.  I know I'd never run a poll like this based on something like DF feature requests, for example, because it's difficult to trust the process.  It seems like it's roughly working, given the breakdown of posts here, but I really couldn't be sure without more tools.

SMF allows you to see people's IP addresses. Assuming any puppeteers were dumb enough not to use proxies, you can tell from this. Any voters registered after this poll was started can also be suspect.

[Janus]

I'm not sure how to detect sockpuppets in SMF polls.  I know I'd never run a poll like this based on something like DF feature requests, for example, because it's difficult to trust the process.  It seems like it's roughly working, given the breakdown of posts here, but I really couldn't be sure without more tools.

SMF allows you to see people's IP addresses. Assuming any puppeteers were dumb enough not to use proxies, you can tell from this. Any voters registered after this poll was started can also be suspect.

It actually tracks a list of pretty much all IP addresses ever used by each account. As an administrator, you can view their profile and go to "Track User", and it will list the IP addresses used along with links to any other accounts which have overlap in any of the recorded IP addresses. Of course, some places (schools in particular) use shared IP addresses, so that does have to be taken into account.