Why signatures should be added.

  • tptquantum
    20th Apr 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    For me the forum is looking dead. Always the same questions "duuuh y fullscren broken" "we neeed moar elements" "WHY C4 NO WORKING?!". Everyone looks the same, apart from the avatar. It's boring.

     

    I propose (once again) signatures, and this time a simple "no" won't work. If you like it, okay, if you don't, give a legit reason.

     

    I'll quote @Mrprocom

     

    Flashing colourful GIFs would be everywhere!

    No pictures.

     

    Forum pages would be 50% longer!

    Max. 3 lines.

     

    Signatures are even pretty useless, they serve no purpose at all!

    Really? Wanna bring a link to your site? Wanna bring a quote? Want to share a meme petition against something you hate? Or, simply is bored to type "-<nick>" at the end of your posts?

     

    tl;dr

    -Signatures with:

    -no pics

    -max. 3 lines

    -no formatting

    -links allowed

     

                                                                                                                                -tptquantum

  • Mrprocom
    20th Apr 2017 Moderator 1 Permalink
    @tptquantum (View Post)
    • Adding signatures won't turn those "WHY C4 NO WORKING?!" threads into "OMG I DISCOVERED NEW SUBATOMIC PARTICLES" ones (I know, I'm exaggerating a bit).
    • I never had any problems distinguishing users, their usernames and avatars are more than enough. I don't think others find that a problem as well.
    • Profiles are much more suitable places for sharing your website, I was able to check your website from your profile, others can check out mine if come across my profile.
    • I don't see how bringing random irrelevant quotes is useful.
    • If something is worth sharing here, you can always use the general forum section, though I don't expect any responses unless the thing you are sharing is good enough.
    • I find those political saves and the ones related to using the dislike button very annoying, and I'm sure others do as well, those usually cause flame wars in comments. Making people able to share things they are against via signatures is like bringing those political/dislike-related saves to the forums. That can't be a good thing.
    • Why would you ever want to type "-username" at the end of your posts? usernames are shown clearly above posts, they look prettier than their "-username" counterparts. Also those usernames shown above saves link to profiles, which makes them more useful.

    These are my responses to each point you listed, here are more reasons others posted against the same suggestion:
    • http://tpt.io/.38546 "They do nothing but make threads harder to read. We have profiles for sharing info about yourself. Don't make the forums any more cluttered than it has to be."
    • http://tpt.io/.217532 "I really think that signatures would get in the way of posts. Plus, they tend to be annoying; you cant tell sometimes where the post actually is in some cases"
    • http://tpt.io/.217730 "often times I'm taken to a forum. I cant find the actual post, and I mistake signature for the real post ... And then there are times that the signature is longer than the post itself"
    • http://tpt.io/.217731 "they are unnecessary, take up space, and are usually large images and gifs anyway. If you wanted to say something about yourself, why wouldn't you just put it on your profile?"
    • http://tpt.io/.217733 "We likke keep These forums clean and pure; The addition of signitures would do more harm than good."


    Also, I think that signatures could cause more off-topic conversations, people would comment on each other's signatures rather than talking about whatever the thread they are on is about, and at some point, people would demand the implementation of images/gifs in signatures.

    Edit: let's take this thread as an example, if each person had a 3-lines long signature, that page would be 42% longer (the meaning of life). I know that it's very unlikely that each one of them will have a 3 lines long signature, but it's just an example.

    Edit2: I can't tell if I seemed to be somewhat agressive, sorry if I were :P
    Edited 4 times by Mrprocom. Last: 20th Apr 2017
  • tptquantum
    20th Apr 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    @Mrprocom (View Post)

     Don't worry :)

    I know that it won't turn the crappy noob threads in awesome subframe threads, but it'll be less repetitive.

    Having users to check your profile to see your website is long. For example: what if I told you "hey, check my profile to see my website", I think that you'll think of it less than if I told you "hey, check my website!".

    /me shrugs about quotes, seeing some in forums x)

    And - who would share those kind of saves? I know a user who does that, however.

    Eh, you're right about this -signature. It looks kind of bad.

     

    I'm not getting how people could mistake the signature for the post -_-'

     

    Oh, and I seen on a lot of forums that they were A LOT of signatures, and it's just not looking clogged up. They could just add a scrolling bar anyways :p

     

    Also, you're always thinking about the worse cases. On forums never seen someone with giant flashy GIFs, lots of links, and other stuff.

  • tptquantum
    22nd Apr 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    bumpy bump

  • Mrprocom
    22nd Apr 2017 Moderator 0 Permalink
    There doesn't seem to be anything else to say :P
    Anyway, I don't think I can convince you in some of the reasons we talked about, but I guess I can reply to some of the things you replied to.

    About the quotes thing, they seem pretty rare here in this forum, and I think it's recommended not to append irrelevant quotes to all your posts.
    I didn't generalise saying that everyone hates political/dislike-related saves, I only said that I think a lot of them hate those kinds of saves, so bringing their content to the forum is a bad idea.
    Same for the clogged up thing, maybe signatures works well for some forums, but it surely won't for every single one of them.
    I don't have average numbers to use for my calculations, so I went with the worst case scenario. I probably even calculated it wrong. Anyway, if everyone had 1 line long signatures, each full thread page would have 10 more lines, if everyone had 2 lines long signatures, it would increase by 20 and so on.
    Adding more scrollbars would make the forum uglier.

    The reasons I previously mentioned are probably the same reasons to why @jacob1 doesn't want signatures to be added.
  • jacob1
    22nd Apr 2017 Developer 0 Permalink
    REJECTED

    I like the cleanliness of the forums right now, and @Mrprocom summed up all the reasons nicely
  • tptquantum
    22nd Apr 2017 Member 0 Permalink
  • EaterOfCake
    25th Apr 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    I mean if you have a desperate need to sign your messages, you put your signature in a text document and copy-paste it in.

     

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    So then you end up with something like this.

    A link to a site can be added: https://powdertoy.co.uk/Discussions/Thread/View.html?Thread=21641

    But not a picture.