signature

mommy-medic

New member
I don't know how to check on overall size- I think this is probably entirely too big. I dont like how incredibly grainy it got when I animated it anyway so probably off to change. Just testing it out here.... 1716379 bytes is how many kbs? too many?
 
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crunchierthanthou

New member
Signatures may be up to 640 pixels wide and 240 pixels tall, including all text, tickers and images. Your image is 640x240, which is every possible pixel. ;) The two lines of text above it do put you over the limit. My personal opinion is that animated signatures are, uh... a bit too busy. :eek:

It's easy to check the size of pictures in IE or Firefox. Simply right click on the image and choose properties. It will show you the dimensions. It's a bit trickier when it involves text or you are using Chrome.
 

mommy-medic

New member
Thanks. I don't like that one AT ALL. It looked a lot better till I saved it in GIF mode and then it got all grainy and gross.

If it's ok, I would like to use this thread to keep testing alternative ideas?
 

mommy-medic

New member
Arghhh!!! I didn't realize that when you post a new sig, it changes it on your old posts. Off to just change the darn thing back to my old one till I find something I know I like (and am ok with having it shouw up everywhere on the baord!) Sorry.
 

Admin

Admin - Webmaster
My personal opinion is that animated signatures are, uh... a bit too busy. :eek:
.

The letter of the law is that there are no real public guidelines on animated signatures, except that animated GIFs directly uploaded to the forums for hosting are generally not permitted for most usergroups other than sponsors. Animated GIFs are permitted in certain usergroups for hosting animated avatars and profile images, though. Of course, the software has no way to enforce this on self hosted signature images. There are always other workarounds, too, but anything particularly flashy would end up being subject to moderators discretion.

The spirit of the law is that the goal of the restrictions on signatures is to allow members to see them without having 90% of a page content filled up with flashy images and photos, making it hard to find the few lines of text in between.

You can turn them all off, of course, but I think signatures add a great deal to a community forum, within reason.

Like most things, it ends up being very difficult to police. Sometimes things fly under the radar for weeks until people start reporting it. Then the member takes that as implied consent that it is OK. Other times one is deemed questionable, but we take no action as it isn't quite over the line. Then someone else takes it one step further, justifying it with the presence of the other one. No matter how many rules you create, there is always a loophole or a way to bend them. It's a lot easier for us to stick with "moderator discretion", even though that may vary from day to day and moderator to moderator. For as many people who would get upset because they feel they are being overly scrutinzed when it comes to moderators discretion, just as many would be upset when we try to close the loophole they found in the terms of service or behavior.

Anyway, we do our best. The one you have now looks great, and you're welcome to use this thread as a test! It is kind of a hassle since your signature is updated in all your old posts, too.

Funny story about that and about loopholes. I once included a reference that I was a technician in my signature on a forum at a very popular website where I had been helping answer questions from parents. I was told something about how this certification wasn't accepted or verifiable, so I had to remove it (even though in their defense they actually included the link to the safekids page where you could verify it!). So, I changed it to something informative with a link to Safe Kids USA or SafetyBeltSafe and ultimately my email address. Nope, those were all no-nos, too, under a secret "No Bumper Sticker" rule that appeared in none of the rules or policies they linked for me to defend their stance. Finally, I gained the attention of the head administrator, as they deleted my messages asking for clarification of the secret rules, stating that they do not discuss their public policies in public (?). I suspect this had more to do with the fact that I was answering questions daily and correctly, whereas the moderators would pop in once and a while with marginal responses based on some of their questionable website content (yeah, that never helps your cause!). It was amazing how much of a hassle I got for replying to posts on child seats with short, simple answers. Ultimately, she told me that signatures were not, in fact, allowed at all. Of course, I asked why there was a signature entry field in the profile if this was the case. She [the manager/admin] said she had never noticed it! Nonetheless, I was told to go back into all my old posts and edit out the signatures manually since their software didn't work like this one. Of course, I simply went and bulk deleted all my old posts since that took far less effort. I didn't participate there much after that. They closed that sub forum some time later, as I suspect they knew they lacked the expertise to be any kind of authority on the topic.

Clearly, they didn't appreciate that they had one or more volunteers doing for free what their paid staff was unable to do. We do appreciate that here! Granted, there's no paid staff, but we do try to hassle members as little as possible. Though sometimes it may be hard to believe, we'd rather be doing almost anything else than dealing with signatures and reports and drama and such. We also try to be a little more understanding than the big corporate forums I hope. I also learned that "Moderators discretion" is a lot easier than creating a gazillion rules for every contingency, only to find some wise $@# who finds one that was missed... Sorry to go off on a tangent. It's late and the mind wanders lol.
 

Simplysomething

New member
Still, it's interesting, admin (whoever you might be right now...), the tale of the other forum that didn't appreciate you, and had arbitrary rules and regulations.

Even though I think that the signatures allowed here are still too big, I love that there is a limit that IS enforced (eh, for the most part. No one is getting all bent out of shape because someone is a teeny bit over, and no one has gigantic signatures...). So, when I do view the board where signatures are visible, it's not too too distracting.

Though, I'd love it if they were off to the side, where the username and stuff are now. Then I could turn them back on, cause they'd be so much easier to glance over and get to the meat of the posts.

Of course, this isn't the simplysomething forum, so I deal. ;)

I agree with crunchy, on the subject of animated siggies, for the most part. I think if you can get the animation speed just right, they're not too too bad. Anything that is flashy and sparkly [glitter infested blinkies]...make me ill to look at. But other stuff, not so much. Like ones where they rotate through some pics, at the right speed, it's not too bad. It's hard to get the right speed though.

And there is always the escape key. Or adblocking the image. heh
 

Admin

Admin - Webmaster
Still, it's interesting, admin (whoever you might be right now...), the tale of the other forum that didn't appreciate you, and had arbitrary rules and regulations.

Exactly. Despite referencing their terms of service and user agreements, they still ended up being arbitrary and making up stuff out of the blue. And that's with full time paid staff, management, board of directors, etc, etc. Funny thing is, I guarantee that a lot of the questions on forum rules and policy discussed in this forum would have been instantly removed there.

The difference is that here we don't have a false pretense of always being fair and righteous, with uniform interpretation of the letter of the written rules. Heck, we didn't even really have a list of guidelines until about a year and a half ago when I modified some public domain ones to serve as a framework. I did put the moderators discretion part in bold and underline, though;-)

It's almost always a no-win situation. If we take no action on a report, the person(s) who reported it no doubt feel we ignored them or that we let someone break their interpretation of the rules. We never ignore a report, but sometimes we disagree or decide that it wasn't quite bad enough to take action. If we do take some action, that person probably feels like they were unfairly sent a warning or infraction, when others got away with the same thing. Then there's all the stuff that we miss, because it was never noticed or reported.

With over a dozen volunteers routinely responding to reports and other issues, I admit that arbitrary is often as good as it gets, much as we try to be fair. We don't even have the luxury of weekly meetings to discuss how things are done. So when a few moderators respond to some reported issue, they may not be the same ones that responded to a similar issue a few weeks ago. Hopefully they recall how it was handled, but there is no guarantee. Sometimes we don't even all agree. Given all the differences of opinion, it goes a lot more smoothly that one might expect.
 

Guest

New member
Just wanted to voice support for the way it is now.

I like sigs and avatars. I don't remember them all, but it does help me sort of keep track of the flow of conversation. Particularly when I'm surfing on my phone and the screen is too small to display the username area. But yeah, animated stuff can get way too busy since the whole point of this place is the text in all the posts.
 

Simplysomething

New member
I don't see D getting rid of signatures, Codex. Too many people like them, I am very much in the minority in my dislike for busy signatures. And helpfully, he's told me how to disable them so that I don't have to look at them. heh
 

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