A request for the community: the use of images in your signatures

[Grover]

Hi,

I have a kind request to the community or Kier&Mike: I see a fair amount of people displaying all kinds of graphics in their signatures to show (off?) their number of trophies/likes/postings, etc. Isn't this information already available somewhere in your profiles/usercards? Also a lot of people are using images to display their other social network links/profiles, like Facebook, Twitter et, etc, etc. Shouldn't this just be available in your profile aswell?

For me one of the selling points of xenForo is the cleanliness of threaddisplay: it is a complete breath of much needed fresh air compared to current forum systems. I feel that us, the community adding all these 'unneccesary' images to their signatures makes this forum much harder to read.

I expect I will be buried now ... but maybe it's an idea to keep this in mind or maybe images could even be blocked (or allowing a maximum width/height) over here?

Yes, I am picky... this posting will not get many 'likes', the devil on my left shoulder tells me.

 

[Gerry5039]

So my signature would be considered bad then...?

No I actually think your signature is very tasteful, although I can see his point, most threads I have seen on other boards have grotesque signatures, which to be honest lowers the tone of the board. It would be a shame to see another going the same way.

And Floris I actually think yours is very neat and not sore on the eyes at all, nice.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I would say if that if you don't like viewing signatures, this is why the ability to disable seeing them exists.

 

[Erik]

Yeah, I just kind of came up with a cool dynamic signature to 1-up Floris, and it kind of turned into this whole thing...

Sorry if you don't like them. I did try to make them as small and unobtrusive as possible while still making them look good and readable. If you don't want to see signatures, you can always turn them off as many have mentioned.
And honestly, I don't think it's that redundant as the information isn't displayed inline anywhere else on the page. You can click on their avatar, but that takes a while. Honestly I think it's kind of cool to be scrolling through and see everyone's posts, likes, and trophies. It makes it feel a whole lot more social as well.

 

[Gerry5039]

I would say if that if you don't like viewing signatures, this is why the ability to disable seeing them exists.

Yes Anthony but wouldn't that turn all of them off, a nice little signature can be neat, but advertising everything else like a bill board can become grotesque, that's why there are only one line signatures on my board.

 

[Cezz]

Yes Anthony but wouldn't that turn all of them off, a nice little signature can be neat, but advertising everything else like a bill board can become grotesque, that's why there are only one line signatures on my board.

I am sure some sort of rules will be needed at some point but I think everything is really nice Atm its about flare and personality... after all xenforo.com is a new home for most of us...

 

[Biker]

There's flare and personality, and then there's screaming LOOK AT ME! I hate images in signatures with a passion. They're not necessary, detract from the thread, and usually do nothing more than stroke the ego of the individual who created it.

 

[Erik]

Ok, if you really don't want to see these, you can get the AdBlock Plus Firefox extension and add this rule to your blocking list:

xenaddicts.com/sig/?userid=*

This will only block the sig images, nothing else on the xenAddicts site. I don't really think it's the best solution, but I want everyone to be happy as much as possible.

 

[Sami]

Ok, if you really don't want to see these, you can get the AdBlock Plus Firefox extension and add this rule to your blocking list:

Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Mikey]

I don't think so, though in my personal taste I would make the social icons smaller

There we go, decreased the size of my sig by half, nice.

 

[Enigma]

TBH, I don't care for images in signatures at all.

 

[Kier]

Or, you could just switch off Your Account > Preferences > Show other people's signatures with their messages

 

[Brandon_R]

Did not know we have that. 5 days in and still surprises

 

[Enigma]

Or, you could just switch off Your Account > Preferences > Show other people's signatures with their messages

It's not a huge deal. Has more to do with personal preferences.

 

[Peggy]

I tend to turn off sigs when I'm on a site where people use alot of images, or large images, in their sigs. Reason being is that most forums have their sigs kissing the underside of the post, rather than injecting the little code snippet that moves the sig down to the bottom of the post. When the sig is way up there, and you have a brief post, the content darn near gets lost in the post.
Example (and I'm not picking on you Mikey): look at Mikey's post above. His content is almost completely lost between the quote and his sig. (Tho it does look better now that he's reduced the image sizes).

 

[Eric J.]

As long as someone doesn't go overboard with the size I don't mind having them turned on. I think any signature that has over 150px of content are just taking up too much room. It's a signature, not a personal information database. :/

A Little >> A Lot

 

[Mopquill]

I know I'm guilty of "loud" signatures, but, in my experience, it's better to disable users from being able to do what they ought not to do. On my forums, I use height:X and overflow:auto to make it so signatures larger than what I set X to scroll. This generally encourages users to try shrinking their signature so it still looks elegant, while having the content they want in it, rather than anyone having to police them.

I may go shrink my signature image now, out of politeness. >.>

 

[captainslater]

I never see the use of huge signatures with images, tons of smilies etc.
Just on or two links/quotes is enough I think.

 

[Disjunto]

I never see the use of huge signatures with images, tons of smilies etc.
Just on or two links/quotes is enough I think.

I try and keep my signatures nice and small. If I use images I try and make them as clean and simple as possible.

People with a signatures longer than their average post length are just annoying

 

[Sami]

Sigs are usually 10 times more important and interesting to the owner than anyone else.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I disabled mine the moment people starting stuffing big images into them, as Kier outlined above in the member options. I think I left them a few days, and once images begun, off they went. I tend to rarely have signatures on upon any forum community... I find they detract from the information. I have them turned off on my sites, members don't even get the choice to use them.