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I really don't see the big deal with changing everyone's sigs. If it truly is a server issue, then fine, but other than obnoxiously large pictures, I've never had a real problem with the style of anyone's sigs.

Polonius wrote:

Ghidorah wrote:I don't care much anymore now that I've learned how to just block images...

This is what I'm trying to say. Why take away from those that don't mind, or want to keep sig images the way they are when you can simply code in a filter for everyone's profile that allows you to turn sigs on or off? That way, when looking at somebody's posts, you don't have to see the sig if you don't want to, but I still can, if I want to.



Ghidorah

InyokaMadoda wrote:One completely pointless thought; would this mean the end of the Survivor games rule for posting if no-one else has for two hours?

Other than that, the changes sound good to me.

The survivor games forum is excluded from this feature, so nothing will change there. I can add exclusions to other forums (swap shop, etc) if it ends up being a problem too.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Am I still #1?

By a long way - it will be a while before anyone comes close to catching up with you. Only yakface is near right now.

JohnHwangDD wrote:So the 100-px limit applies to text sigs as well?

All sigs, will be 100 pixel cropped, so yes text too. Text is more flexible though so can be pushed into multiple long lines if more needs to be squashed in. Removing quote tags from a quote and just manually formatting it will save a lot of space too.

Vertrucio wrote:I always considered big signatures to be a bit redundant in modern forums anyway. Well, that and a bit narcissistic.

All you'd really need is the avatar image to the left, the tag under your forum name. Maybe a little text in your actual sig for a quote, or maybe, *gasp* an actual signature.

But honestly, a sig goes in every message you post, and to be frank, people don't need to see the same stuff being posed with every single message you post.

Signatures are more an email/mail in general sort of thing. They're not often read one after another and there's usually a delay with them, thus signatures help people stay on top of just who they're conversing with.

With forums, especially big forums, messages are stacked top to bottom and with other automatically generated info.

Ghidorah wrote:Personally, I think this is 100% totally unnecessary and rather lame. 100 pixel height is borderline useless. That's a good height/width for an avatar, not a sig image.

Out of all the forums I own, moderate, lurk, and post on (which is a lot), this is the most anally retentive and overly-sensitive one in regards to sigs and sig images (not to mention threadomancy, but that's a whole other rant).

I boggles my mind that a community that is SOOOO consumed with such a creative modeling and painting hobby would be annoyed or irritated by creativity in a digital medium.
I just don't get all the sig hate.

I love all the text quotes. I love to read what people think is funny and I often get to read funny things I missed in the forums. I love to see the release of the creativity in Luna's oft-changed sigs. I love looking at people's Dakka Code. Sure, when somebody tries to add a sig image that's 800x1250 pixels, it blows goat but, honestly, when has that ever happened?

200x600 is a perfect size for sig images. It is still a manageable size on an 800x600 res monitor. It won't resize anyone's browsers unless they are still using that 13" Sun CRT with 640x480 monitor. If that's the case, they should go jump on a sharp stake anyway.



Intentionally or not, this quote is basically how I see this forced sig change.

grizgrin wrote:A little controling, are we? Lord almighty, you just wont be happy until everyone is straightjacketed into "enjoying" Dakka the same EXACT way you see it, will you?

Why not just add an option in the user's profile that allows you to toggle sigs on or off? That way, if 'Joey Nofunguy' doesn't want to hit that scroll wheel ONE extra time to get to the bottom of the thread he hasn't read before posting his reply, he can turn sigs off in his CP. However, King Ghidorah (who is a creative dude that loves creativity) can still get full enjoyment out of the members of this varied bunch. You know, the people's creativity here isn't JUST limited to painting or conversions. It's just wargames minis that we talk about and showcase.

Ghidorah
Who hates censorship of any kind.

VermGho5t wrote:Could just get rid of signature pictures entirely. God knows there are enough stupid dumb users who have a full stable of constantly changing or otherwise stationary signatures, with no interesting or vital info in them.

These three quotes show some of the division that exists. Read the other two threads (one linked at the top of this thread, the other linked from that thread) to get a good handle on the division of opinions. The poll that was run revealed that the most accepted overall change. There are a few reasons why this change is needed...
- Guest users need a better default. Ignoring/removing sigs for them is too harsh on people who want to advertise their blogs or shops in their sigs.
- Users on smaller resolutions still exist. People browse dakka on phones and netbooks, and a 150-200 pixel high signature can take up 2/3 of the screen. In long threads where people are not talking much that can get very tedious. Registered users can disable sigs, but guest users cannot.
- People still like signatures (myself included), but generally not when they are obnoxiously huge. There are often interesting things posted in signatures, but they simply dont need that much space. Like IM-style typing, larger signatures bias people against the poster based on how annoying they perceive the signature to be.
- The current method of cropping the sigs in some but not all browsers is butt ugly. The crop space needs to be allocated to all posts for it to work properly and 150 pixels is simply too much to spare. 100 pixels is a fair space, and generous compared to the many, many forums who dont allow images, or who only allow standard banner height (60 pixels) signatures.
- Moderator effort spent telling people to cut down their sigs involves an annoying process and wastes valuable mod time. Forced cropping will save a lot of effort and keep the mods in a better mood.

Whatever we implement will displease about a quarter of people, but this is most likely the best solution for dakka overall based on user input.

If I may interject here?

I'm not too fond of animated avatars and signatures, as it gets *extremely* annoying seeing the same looping animations every few posts. Are we going to see any changes with this?

Is it possible to create an ignore sig for a person similar to how you have ignore person right now? I know there are some sigs that are anoying to look at, mainly all of those wierd monster things and Shummy's sig. If you code in a seperate ignore feature for their sig only I think it would be more effective/leniant than this across the board reduction.

I'm with Ghidorah on this one.

So my average small web banner that is 60 pixels height and 468 pixels width is Ok?

I think this is all a bit to much... whats next? Do not post images on threads just url's... ?

Cheese Elemental wrote:If I may interject here?

I'm not too fond of animated avatars and signatures, as it gets *extremely* annoying seeing the same looping animations every few posts. Are we going to see any changes with this?

Are you kidding? tThose are the best!


edit: have you seen goffnob deffsmakka's new sig? BAYSPLOSIONS!!!

Ok, the cropping thing is even more stupid because it's cutting pictures off, leaving bits of pictures sitting there.

Was this change really necessary?

Ratbarf wrote:Is it possible to create an ignore sig for a person similar to how you have ignore person right now? I know there are some sigs that are anoying to look at, mainly all of those wierd monster things and Shummy's sig. If you code in a seperate ignore feature for their sig only I think it would be more effective/leniant than this across the board reduction.

While technically possible, it would still not solve some of the issues that required this change which I listed in an earlier post. The extra load on the database would be a pain as well.

NAVARRO wrote:So my average small web banner that is 60 pixels height and 468 pixels width is Ok?

Completely fine.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Ok, the cropping thing is even more stupid because it's cutting pictures off, leaving bits of pictures sitting there.

Was this change really necessary?

49% of dakka's users have been seeing cropped text and images in signatures for months and it does look crappy. This change makes that cropping consistent across all web browsers, which will encourage people with oversized signatures to clean them up, though this will probably take a couple of weeks to filter through.

The changes are live now but you might not see them for a week or so until your local cache is updated. You can force this to update now by holding down shift and pressing refresh on any forum page. Unless there ends up being some major technical issue with the new sig limits then I'll never have to touch the code again so whatever you do with your sig now will not require it to be changed again.

I don't see why it can't be a choice. Make it 'on' by default, and if people want to see sigs they can enable it.

I have now managed to figure out an IE hack that lets me crop at 150 pixels with better spacing, so the required drop to 100 pixels is no longer required. As a result sigs will stay at 150 unless there is a large number of requests to drop it to 100. The main technical reason to change to 100 is no longer relevant, so it is simply a matter of preference now. I'm going to close this thread now since it is no longer relevant and sigs have been discussed to death already.