Announcement: Signature length limit now enforced automatically

[Doctor Q]

Signatures are provided as a way to identify or express yourself in a small, friendly way. The rules are designed to keep the area for signatures from being a distraction or annoyance to those reading the forums.

By Forum Rules, signatures may be no taller than 6 lines and no longer than 150 characters and spaces.

These limits have been enforced by the moderators when oversized signatures were reported.

The rules have not changed, but the 150-character rule is now enforced automatically by the forum software when you use the Signature page of your User Control Panel.

The 150-character limit applies only to visible and space characters, so vB Code tags do not count toward the total. For example, [b]hello there[/b] counts as 11 characters, not 18, because the text it produces is hello there.

The other signature rules are unchanged as well:

• Signatures must not be overly distracting to those reading the forums, as judged by the moderators.
• Signatures must comply with all forum rules, including those against profanity, explicit sexual content, and insults against groups or individuals, and cannot be in other ways offensive.
• Members will be required to change signatures that are deemed too controversial or that are particularly annoying to other members.

If you want other forum members to know what computer hardware you use, we suggest that you limit it to model names, without detailed system specs, so it stays under the size limits. You can put other system information in your User Profile.

If you do not want to see other members' signatures at all, you can disable their display in the Thread Display Options section of your Options page.

Note that six lines is a maximum, not a recommendation. Please observe the spirit of the rule and keep signatures small. And friendly!

Thank you for your continued cooperation.

 

[devilot]

This actually excites me... a great deal. Thanks so much!

 

[mad jew]

For example, hello counts as 5 characters, not 12, because the text it produces is hello.

Neat. How'd you do that oh masterful god? How'd you make "hello" not bold? It's gone bold in my quote...

 

[devilot]

Neat. How'd you do that oh masterful god? How'd you make "hello" not bold? It's gone bold in my quote...

Gasp. You're right! At first I thought you were being a crack head... but then I realized. How did Doctor Q do that?!

 

[Doctor Q]

I used the top secret trick of replacing the [ characters that I didn't want to be recognized as part of a tag with the string [ which comes out as a literal [ character.

 

[edesignuk]

Neat. How'd you do that oh masterful god? How'd you make "hello" not bold? It's gone bold in my quote...

You can also use the [plain] tag

:p

 

[WinterMute]

They are all having you on, mad jew, MR gods have the ability to affect the fabric of space and time down to the sub-atomic and binary levels, the word wasn't enboldened because the mighty Dr.Q willed it that way....

 

[Deepdale]

Signatures are provided as a way to identify or express yourself in a small, friendly way.

Unfortunately, there are selected sigs that just seem to trumpet the arrival of a self-proclaimed VIP. I think three lines is more than adequate, and it is not vital for others to know about all equipment that was purchased in the last 10 years. In the world of sigs, less can be more.

 

[dcv]

Oh this is good news... but what would be even better news would be if the ability to use "

" tags in sigs had been turned off. This is probably the single most annoying thing that people can do with their signatures

 

[mad jew]

They are all having you on, mad jew, MR gods have the ability to affect the fabric of space and time down to the sub-atomic and binary levels, the word wasn't enboldened because the mighty Dr.Q willed it that way....

Doctor Q is Chuck Norris? Way cool.

...the ability to use "quote" tags in sigs had been turned off. This is probably the single most annoying thing that people can do with their signatures

I couldn't agree more.

 

[Lau]

Oh this is good news... but what would be even better news would be if the ability to use "quote" tags in sigs had been turned off. This is probably the single most annoying thing that people can do with their signatures

I also agree with this - it makes a one line signature into what seems more obtrusive than a 10 line signature.

 

[Sharewaredemon]

I've been a sig watcher ever since the thread we had this past summer about annoying sigs.

I'm much happier with the smaller font sig I have now, than the one I had before.

 

[treblah]

Would it be possible for an option to disable sigs all together?

As far as I'm concerned it just seems like an online pissing match as to who has the most Apple stuff.

But thanks for reigning them in!

 

[wordmunger]

Would it be possible for an option to disable sigs all together?

As far as I'm concerned it just seems like an online pissing match as to who has the most Apple stuff.

But thanks for reigning them in!

Yeesh, as Doctor Q said, you can disable them yourself if you want. I like .sigs, as it's another way of seeing who said what. But if you don't like them, turn them off.

 

[Doctor Q]

As far as I'm concerned it just seems like an online pissing match as to who has the most Apple stuff.

Perhaps people can do that here and leave the signatures for something more interesting.

 

[emw]

You can also use the [plain] tag

:p

Ah, one of my personal favorites. For a complete list of tags, visit here.

 

[Kernow]

For a complete list of tags, visit here.

Very useful - thank you.

 

[~Shard~]

This is great news, I was getting tired of reporting people's sigs!

Great initiative Doctor Q, thanks for this.

 

[20rogersc]

Thanks! This is what I have been waiting for.
No more cursing at the screen.
Good job.

::20ROGERSC::

 

[Sharewaredemon]

I would like to apologize to the mods who recieved my message reporting a sig today because it was 7 lines.

Turns out it was only that long cause I was on my laptop and the sig was stretched onto 7 lines by Safari.

Sorry!

 

[emw]

I would like to apologize to the mods who recieved my message reporting a sig today because it was 7 lines.

Turns out it was only that long cause I was on my laptop and the sig was stretched onto 7 lines by Safari.

Sorry!

Unless you had your Safari window really small then the sig was probably too long anyway...

 

[Doctor Q]

I would like to apologize to the mods who recieved my message reporting a sig today because it was 7 lines.

Turns out it was only that long cause I was on my laptop and the sig was stretched onto 7 lines by Safari.

It's a very fine point, and we try not to quibble about such things, but technically the rule is that "Signatures may not be over 6 lines in total height, as displayed in a forum window." So if you use a sig with one long line that linewraps to 10 lines with a typical forum window width, that's technically too tall. However, the character limit usually takes care of that.

 

[Sharewaredemon]

It's a very fine point, and we try not to quibble about such things, but technically the rule is that "Signatures may not be over 6 lines in total height, as displayed in a forum window." So if you use a sig with one long line that linewraps to 10 lines with a typical forum window width, that's technically too tall. However, the character limit usually takes care of that.

Well I don't think you changed it, but I just wanted to appologise...

EDIT turns out you cut his sig down a lot.

It looks much better, thanks.

 

[vniow]

 

[FoxyKaye]

Trimmed accordingly - seems like a decent enough rule. Thx!