[SPLIT] Increase signature length?

Message

stonent · Post by **stonent** » Fri May 28, 2004 9:35 am

Mod Edit: Split from this topic - tomk

Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room! OT: Oh and I don't remember anyone coming clean on why graphics were disabled

andrew_j_w · Post by **andrew_j_w** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:18 pm

stonent wrote:Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room!

Erm, why not put more than one thing on a line? Five lines is plenty - I don't want to have to scroll past pages of signatures to find the interesting stuff.

Andrew

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:21 pm

andrew_j_w wrote:
stonent wrote:Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room!
Erm, why not put more than one thing on a line? Five lines is plenty - I don't want to have to scroll past pages of signatures to find the interesting stuff.

It is limited to 255 characters, not 5 lines. So even if your visible sig is pretty short adding hyperlinks and maybe even a [size] tag to make the text smaller push it over the 255 character mark.
For example I attempted to put a two line sig that was also pretty short lines but it wouldn't fit because it contained a few links with longish URLs and I also use a size tag to make my sig take up less screen space but that adds characters too.

andrew_j_w · Post by **andrew_j_w** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:25 pm

Oops, I guess I should have checked before I posted... I got confused between the rules on different boards.

I guess 255 characters is a little small if you want to put some links in.

Andrew

aethyr · Post by **aethyr** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:34 pm

stonent wrote:Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room! OT: Oh and I don't remember anyone coming clean on why graphics were disabled :)

255 characters is PLENTY for a signature. Have you seen signatures on some forums? They're completely ridiculous. Graphics should be disabled for exactly the same reason.

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:43 pm

aethyr wrote:
stonent wrote:Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room! OT: Oh and I don't remember anyone coming clean on why graphics were disabled
255 characters is PLENTY for a signature. Have you seen signatures on some forums? They're completely ridiculous. Graphics should be disabled for exactly the same reason.

Yea I think graphics should stay off, especially since we get a bit of spam these days and I don't want to be confronted by Mr Goatse one day

.

Although on the sig point once you take into account links 255 characters isn't that much. There should maybe be a larger character limit and a rule that sigs should be no longer than 3 lines, say. Although this might end up a pain for mods to enforce so...

Edit: perhaps the sig limit discussion should be split into a seperate thread, mods?

stormcrowley · Post by **stormcrowley** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:50 pm

nrl wrote:Yea I think graphics should stay off, especially since we get a bit of spam these days and I don't want to be confronted by Mr Goatse one day .

Excellent point, right there.

puggy · Post by **puggy** » Fri May 28, 2004 1:14 pm

aethyr wrote:
stonent wrote:Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room! OT: Oh and I don't remember anyone coming clean on why graphics were disabled
255 characters is PLENTY for a signature. Have you seen signatures on some forums? They're completely ridiculous. Graphics should be disabled for exactly the same reason.

Yeah. I'm a member on a forum where some people have animated avatars and signatures, some of which hit 1/2 MB. It takes about 10 years to load a page on my cable connection if the stuff isn't cached. On a slow computer browsing the page is really jerky because of all the activity.

Puggy

stonent · Post by **stonent** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:33 pm

Well having links to just a few posts can push you over the limit. Especially when you name the link.

nevynxxx · Post by **nevynxxx** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:40 pm

www.tinylink.com should solve the "I can't get enough links in my sig" thing. To some extent anyway.

stonent · Post by **stonent** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:43 pm

Well I'm at the limit here. I just inserted a size tag and had to remove some text so it would let me put the size tag. If only the limit were on the visible text and not the BBcode. That would have been perfect.

edit: Well I converted my links to tinyurl and got another line to fit.

abzs2k · Post by **abzs2k** » Fri May 28, 2004 4:25 pm

I once countered the "no image problem" using an ASCII art snippet.

aethyr · Post by **aethyr** » Fri May 28, 2004 9:12 pm

Stonent, maybe it's a good thing you're at the limit. I think your signature is pretty long as it is ;)

curtis119 · Post by **curtis119** » Sat May 29, 2004 5:40 pm

I've always enjoyed most of the sigs on the Gentoo forums. Most of them are pretty funny or convey a message important to the owner. I like mine to be either poetic, inspirational or philisophical. We should definitely keep images out of sigs though. Puggy was right abut 1/2 meg sigs taking forever to load in other forums and it's a pain in the ass. Maybe the suggestion to not count BBcode as part of the 255 character limit is the best idea. Just my opinion.

edit. Spam is a bad thing to most people (including me) so we should ban those that sign up for a forum account just to spam the rest of us. But spam in your sig should be allowed. Sigs are very personal and make a statement. You should be able to put whatever you want in them. Those that do will most likely be ignored by the rest of us though.

porodzila · Post by **porodzila** » Sat May 29, 2004 8:18 pm

Its a signature, why should it need to be long?

sapphirecat · Post by **sapphirecat** » Sun May 30, 2004 5:53 pm

If you really wanted, maybe you could put a page up somewhere, and have a sig like:
<url=a_single_url>Links for Portage on Solaris, Read/Search/Answer/Reporting on the forums, frobnicating screenshots, repairing dilithium crystals, and collimating the hyperflux quantizers!</url>

stonent · Post by **stonent** » Mon May 31, 2004 9:29 am

Or the other thing, maximizing horizontal space instead of verticle. Which also could be done with more room.

Also I had thought about a links site but that means some people won't see it.

Wanna see a really large sig? http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportforu ... ge.id=9592

aethyr · Post by **aethyr** » Mon May 31, 2004 9:38 am

stonent wrote:Wanna see a really large sig? http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportforu ... ge.id=9592

HAHAHA, omg, I can't believe you even have the courage to show your sig over there in a thread here about increasing your sig size.

Keep sig @ 255 (refer to stonent's link for justification), plz. K, thx.

[edit] just for fun, imagine wading through a forum full of these.

______________________________________________
**** Stonent's Dell Laptop XXXX and FAQ site ****
(Someone made me remove what was in "XXXX")
**** Stonent's Pad (GONE! Lycos lost my database!) ****
****** Stonent's Arcade Cabinet Project site ******
Inspiron 4100 - 1.0Ghz PIII-M 512MB ATI-M6 XGA 20GB DVD XP
PCMark2002 CPU 3220 MEM 2188 HDD 318 3DMark2001SE 1840
Lite-On 32x12x40 CD/RW
C/Dock II W/ Firewire
Latitude XPi P133ST 56MB 12GB Win2K!
<---GRAPHIC--->
PowerEdge 6100 2 x 200MHz Pentium Pros 1GB RAM 6 x 9.1GB
<---GRAPHIC--->
1xSS5, 1xSS4, 2xClassics, 1xIPC, 1 Ultra AXe
<---GRAPHIC--->
Indy R5000/SC-150 192MB RAM 36GB HD
IBM DRIVE UTILTIES
Power Booster
Drive Fitness Test
USEFUL STUFF
Free AVG AntiVirus
Network boot floppy for Dell systems w/ Packet support (Use Winimage to write it to a disk)
Sound for DOS games under NT/2000/XP
100% Free DVD Player for Windows
Remove SpyWare from your computer!
FIXES
Fix your '(?)PCI bridge' problems
CP/CPi laptop flashing lights and not booting?
Reseat the CPU
FanGUI
Monitor and control the fans on most Dell Laptops
Patches
Solaris 8 keyboard patch for Latitude and Inspiron laptops
OpenGL/Dual Screen Video drivers for 3700, 3800, CPxH, CPxJ, CPtV, CPtS, 5000, 7000, 7500, G1, GX1, Dimension V
Miserable FailureMiserable FailureMiserable FailureMiserable Failure

Post by **pjp** » Mon May 31, 2004 9:47 pm

At that point, it ceases to be a sig, and becomes something else entirely.

At this time there is no real useful reason to increase the allowed sig size, so it will remain at 255.

batterj2 · Post by **batterj2** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:28 pm

[quote="puggy]Yeah. I'm a member on a forum where some people have animated avatars and signatures, some of which hit 1/2 MB. It takes about 10 years to load a page on my cable connection if the stuff isn't cached. On a slow computer browsing the page is really jerky because of all the activity.

Puggy[/quote]

So why not have limitations like on other forums? eg no animations, 500x300 max? Any violation has there post deleted. In another forum I post at which uses phpBB has them deleted if 3 lines of smileys are used and they get a personal message from admin if their sigs are too big.

(admin must really hate me now......sorry, but i really dont see the harm)

aethyr · Post by **aethyr** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:31 pm

batterj2 wrote:_________________
[img:9bc36a0121]http://jimbat.townersworld.co.uk/batterj2.jpg[/img:9bc36a0121]

this thread makes me want to get rid of sigs altogether :P

[edit] I actually thought about your post for a moment. 500x300? 500x300??? For a sig!? that makes me a sad panda :(

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:35 pm

batterj2 wrote: So why not have limitations like on other forums? eg no animations, 500x300 max? Any violation has there post deleted. In another forum I post at which uses phpBB has them deleted if 3 lines of smileys are used and they get a personal message from admin if their sigs are too big.

(admin must really hate me now......sorry, but i really dont see the harm)

The way I see it that just creates unnessecary work for the mods enforcing such a policy.

Anyway how do graphics in peoples signatures add anything to the forum? As far as I can see they are completely useless and only detract from the readability of threads. Also what about the people who still use dial-up, I'm sure they won't appreciate all the extra images they'll have to download, especially since all people really want to do is read the actual posts.

Sorry to go on a bit of a rant but in my humble opinion graphics in sigs are just silly.

Edit: Hang on I missed what you said first time 500x300 max!?, you mean a 500 pixel high signature! That's outrageous, it would take up about half my browser window!

playfool · Post by **playfool** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 12:07 am

aethyr wrote:
stonent wrote:Can we have our signature length expanded so we can link to all these good ideas? I'm out of room! OT: Oh and I don't remember anyone coming clean on why graphics were disabled
255 characters is PLENTY for a signature. Have you seen signatures on some forums? They're completely ridiculous. Graphics should be disabled for exactly the same reason.

At the risk of sounding like a tv evangelist

AMEN BROTHER !!

stonent · Post by **stonent** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:37 am

pjp wrote:At that point, it ceases to be a sig, and becomes something else entirely.

At this time there is no real useful reason to increase the allowed sig size, so it will remain at 255.

Well in many cases it really helps there. One guy has a list of all the common dell part numbers and phone numbers because people are always asking how to get additional drive trays for their laptops and such, so the answer is always "Read Johnallg's sig!"

stonent · Post by **stonent** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:39 am

aethyr wrote:Stonent's sig

You forgot the Bush '04 and Libertatem Defendimus in my sig.

But at least you got my links to the Miserable Failure

Sigs needn't be long in length, you could add links horizontally. My sig now is smaller than some people's in this thread because I use a smaller font. My forum pic with location stretches my post longer than my current sig. Example

Link Link Link Link Link Link Link

That takes less space than my sig now but eats a whole lot more characters.

Linking to your gentoo projects, howtos and some offsite ebuilds would be nice. If you could force the software to not accept line breaks and then give us more characters, we could add more stuff and not have it be offensive.