Forum signatures

[Eric Chan]

Jason and I are backing off a bit on our original stringent "No Signatures Allowed" policy. We're thinking that, when used in moderation, signatures can add a bit of personality, and perhaps help readers to see the person behind the posts. No images for the time being, but URLs are fair game. So link to your cube list, your pet project, your homepage, your awesome self-coded cube tool - link away!

 

[xyz]

Signatures only show up on the first post a person makes in a thread? o_O Kinda weird, I'd like to more easily access someone's signature. Also, can the default be to show signatures, and people can disable if they want to? I think it's really important to show a person's cube along with their comment. Reading the "Oppressive Cards" thread really highlights the importance of context. In fact, people should be required to have signatures for the context.

 

[Eric Chan]

This is good feedback, xyz. Signatures are meant to be used as something of a self-promotional tool, and while most people use it to link their cube lists, that certainly isn't a requirement. Because we don't really want sigs that link to random blogs and such eating up a lot of real estate in a forum discussion, we've limited them to show up only on a user's first post per thread page.

In the upcoming release of Xenforo, they'll be adding some more information that can be displayed underneath the user's avatar, that's formatted kind of like a 'badge'. I think that would be a better place for people to link their cube lists. This was something that James Stevenson suggested in another post, and it should better address the concern of "what does this guy's cube look like". So in your user profile, there'd be a Cube List field, and if you filled it out it'd show up in your badge.

 

[Lucre]

Yeah sigs make you look like a tool that is too invested in their online inneractions.

 

[Lucre]

I wouldnt mind a riptidelab banner for my salvation sig.

 

[VincePendrell]

Isn't it possible to just limit the number of characters and disable img and spoliler tags in the signatures? You could even try to make signatures default to aligning to the right or center so they are not always in the middle of the conversation. I mean, at least so far most signatures have always been links to either a person's lists or to outside projects/publications related to our main theme (like Kranny's and Lebenski's signatures) and I wouldn't mind someone linking to their webcomic/outside project/whatever as long as the signature is not a full lenght paper. Having to find a person's first post in a conversation on a multi-page discussion is pretty obnoxious, though.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I wouldnt mind a riptidelab banner for my salvation sig.

I don't know what dimensions you need, but:

 

[Lucre]

Thanks a lot mate! I'll look into that in the morning!