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

Grover

Grover

Well-known member
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. ;)
 
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Anthony Parsons said:
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.
Click to expand...
And yet you have a signature yourself.
 
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You can all say what you want, but go to the top 50 forums, the ones that allow users to have signatures, and you will see they all have signatures that are bigger than the content of the post. It's the reality of the internet.
 
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Floris said:
You can all say what you want, but go to the top 50 forums, the ones that allow users to have signatures, and you will see they all have signatures that are bigger than the content of the post. It's the reality of the internet.
Click to expand...

doesn't stop it being annoying. big sites also having rollover flash ads that take up the entire screen, but we don't stop hating them :D
 
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Floris said:
You can all say what you want, but go to the top 50 forums, the ones that allow users to have signatures, and you will see they all have signatures that are bigger than the content of the post. It's the reality of the internet.
Click to expand...
It's not wrong to ask something different though.
 
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Yes, I think it has a one line of text??? Yes, mine are turned off... again, I let them run the first day or two, then all the images started, so I turned my account off from viewing them.

I do agree Floris... signatures appeal to certain communities.
 
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Great Boards != Good Boards

In Good Boards, you cant use Pictures in your Signature.

Are you signating Contracts or Letters with a Picture how often you got sex with your wife, how many words you have written in your lifetime Letters or anything like this? I dont think so ;)
 
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I personally like pic-signatures much. As stated above, it tells something about the personality of the user, thus giving the forum a kind of collective identity. "A picture says more than thousands words" - this is a saying in Germany and there is much truth in it.
I understand the viewpoints about random one-liners and huge blocks of graphics underneath, but at least in my vb-forum this is no issue at all, cause most of the active users are multiply interested in all kinds of topics and express their interest with much more than one line of text.
And last, but not least: the sigpics in our forum often are the result of an individual artwork by the users themselves with sometimes stunning impressions.
So in sum for me sigpics are an enrichment and I´d love to see an option here to add them via user-cp. :)
 
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I have them disabled, and so long as I can disable them I don't suppose I have any right to complain, not that that's going to stop me. The thing I hate most about signatures is that you have to look at them in every single post and they break up the flow of conversation more than just about anything else you can do. If they were placed anywhere but at the end of the post I could live with them, but I hate reading a thread with that constant interruption. Even when they're just text it's annoying. Hell, the text is often more annoying, because you end up having to pick through the debris to follow the actual conversation.

"Haha that was funny."
-----
- If you love somebody, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were yours in the first place.

"lmao so true."
----
- A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be somewhere else.

" So (blahblahblah)"
----
- If you love somebody, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were yours in the first place.

"And (blahblahblah)!"
-----
A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be somewhere else.


I find that even more tedious than having to look at something like this at the end of every remark:

mysiggie.gif
 
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I've never had to disable signatures on any forum I visit... until the "XenForo stats bar fad" came about. So many signature images per page (for each post) slowed the page loading time down a bit, and it was just annoying to me to see them everywhere.

Not that I'm complaining, because I disabled signatures long ago and have experienced no nostalgia since. I like the clean, uniform look of the threads without signatures. As long as I have the ability to disable them, I have no issue whatsoever.

If you like certain limitations put into place for signatures (e.g. no images, limit on font size, etc.), you can do this on your own XF installation. For now, you're on somebody else's forum, where they have obviously decided to allow just about anything in signatures. Live with it, or disable them. That's the way I see it. :cool:
 
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I see no real use of signatures on posts which is why I tend to disable them. The only positive effect, IMO, that signatures have is sometimes you remember who a person on a forum is from their signature, although an avatar tends do that, signatures seem to be more memorable as you pass by them more (as they are between each block of content) whilst you may not notice an avatar.
 
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I think, that forums with posts of 6 words max. are kinda boring anyway, regardless if they are mixed with image- and/or picture-signatures or not. Signatures can have a revealing impact on my personal perception of a certain user, I get more acquainted to her/his moods and states.

Why not let the users of a xenforo-board decide, if they like signatures or not? And so an option to allow or disallow sigpics in the admincp is highly desirable at least for me.
 
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LOL, I use to post a LOT on Shakira fan forums years ago.

Entertainment and fan club forums are the home of 1-2 word post threads, heavy with very large signature images in each post, most of the posts carry very little relevant content to the thread topic, after a while you get real tired of belonging to a forum like that, so you are forced to turn off signatures as a member.

Thread example:

forums.shakiramedia.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=26011
 
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I see your point and your link is for sure an example for the heavy abuse and distraction of signatures. But again, on my board sigs (many are individually created) are combined with often long or even "very" long messages, so the perception of them is quite the opposite.
 
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