[mattw]

Many boards allow small images for use in the signature portion of the post. I can understand not wanting to use Avatars becuase they are usually somewhat silly in nature and make the forums look cluttered.

What about rectangular images in the signature bar? Mandate a maximum and minimum size so everyone has a look of uniformity to their posts and nothing looks cluttered or messy. like a 400x80 max or something.

Also you could mandate that it pretain to firearms or the 2a, just like everything else on these boards.

What do you guys think?

I would personally use something like this, here is an example of what it would look like:

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b243/mdw1016/218sm.jpg

Would that really look so bad for a signature instead of just a bunch of quotes and crap like people have now?

Some guy even has a shootist's prayer that takes up more space than his posts usually do. Would these small pictures be too much to ask?

[mattw]

Twenty views and no thoughts?

[Two Cold Soakers]

I don't have any personal problems with images, however, they can dominate a post, and, it seems that The High Road is more about substance and philosopy than image and appearances.

I say no automatic images
The poster can add them when pertinant to individual posts.

Soakers, curmudgeon.

[Mal H]

Let's look at it from a bandwidth viewpoint alone. If there are 4 or 5 of those pictures on an average page of 25 posts, then that is about 100k to 120k of unnecessary bytes that had to be transmitted everytime anyone opened that page. If the notion of pictures in signatures really caught on, you could double or triple those numbers. By contrast, a words-only signature of ten 80 character lines is only 800 bytes. For that reason alone, it's not a good idea in my opinion.

Other reasons include:

Lack of control over what pictures are included. Sure, we can say they must be firearm oriented, but who will police them?

Just like avatars, the pictures would tend to clutter up the page.

Finally, I don't want to see a post containing "+1" followed by a 32k picture of the posters favorite firearm or whatever. It's bad enough with the long-winded signatures as it is.

[mattw]

I guess that makes sense for the savages that still use dial-up, but if everyone had independant image hosting like photobucket I don't see how bandwidth would be an issue.

A 32kb file is pretty damn small. Even if you multiply that by 25 you get 800kb which is less than 1mb... very small. And who says you can't hit the "stop" button on your browser if you don't want to wait for all the images to load? The posts and everything will still be up long before the images are finished loading.

[Larry Ashcraft]

the savages that still use dial-up
Some of us live off the beaten path and that is the only option...

Old phone lines won't support DSL and cable is expensive when you have to run several hundred yards. The only option is satellite and that has to be bundled with your phone and TV service to be cost effective.

[mattw]

That comment about savages was more of a joke. I know that cable and dsl are not available in some areas and that satellite is either impractical or expensive.

I knew I wasn't going to change any minds, but I am glad I asked about this.

The High Road is more about substance and philosopy than image and appearances.


I like this reason. I think bandwidth is more of an excuse.

[tydephan]

It would be ok with me if signatures were disabled completely.

I get tired of reading one line responses with a 10-15 line signature below it.

Just my preference though...

[mattw]

I think a can agree with the man from Alabama, but I say we do it all the way or not at all. Allow pictures in the signatures or don't allow any signatures. Clutter is clutter wether its text or image.

[Brian Williams]

If you think that way why don't you start, and remove your signature completely????

[DogBonz]

and the band with thing is more of a factor than everyone seeing my favorite pic every time I post.

[Outlaws]

I like avatars. I think they help people remember certain users better than just the name. Most forums can limit both the size and the dimensions.

But ya, I agree - all or nothing.

[johndoe1027]

I joined one non-gun forum and they had limits on the size of your signature. At first I thought it was stupid until I started browsing. It was nice to not have a 3 page thread with 12 posts. I definitely think there should be a vertical limit on the sig size if nothing else (pics dont matter to me). I see some guys with their collection listed (one line for each gun) then two or three quotes (with a empty line between each). It just makes it harder to read the thread.
$.02 from me.

[Car Knocker]

Pics, pics? We doan need no steenkin pics!

Pics would just be more crap and clutter on the screen.

[WayneConrad]

Signitures add nothing to a discussion and consume the most precious bandwidth there is: The bandwidth of the reader's brain. Adding pictures to a bad idea won't make it good. This place, more than any other I visit, is about substance over style, value over image.

[pax]

For those who hate signatures:

You can disable signatures in your control panel.

Go to "User CP" (upper left hand corner of the screen, on the green bar)

Select "Edit Options" (on the left-hand menu)

Uncheck the box marked "Display Signatures" (three boxes down in the center screen)

Scroll to the bottom and click "Save Changes."

Finis.

pax

['Card]

I repeat all of this every time this issue comes up, but I reckon I'll keep posting it. :cool:

1. The bandwidth concerns related to sig-images and avatars are somewhat over-rated. The first time you see an image in your browser, it gets stored on your hard drive in the temporary internet files. Until you clean out that folder, every time you see that image again it loads it from your hard drive - not from your internet connection. In other words, you'd only be downloading a new image when someone changed their sig-image or when a new user posted.

I used to be a moderator on a gaming-related forum that was roughly equal in size/activity to THR. When we enabled small (less than 30kb) sig-images and avatars, our total monthly bandwidth hit increased by less than 5% - and if you require that sig-images and avatars be remotely-hosted, there wouldn't be a server-side bandwidth hit at all. Users (including those on dial-up) reported slow-downs over the first week or so, but then once they'd downloaded most of the relevant imagery, their forum speed was roughly the same as before.

2. Try clicking on 'User CP' over on the top left of this page. Then look in the left menu bar and click 'Edit Options'. Now scroll down to the box titled 'Thread Display Options'. See that? Individual users can turn avatars and signatures off if they don't want to look at them. Seems to me like the perfect solution. People who like sig-images and avatars can use them and see them. To people who don't, they wouldn't even exist.

3. As far as increasing moderator workload monitoring sig-images is concerned... as long as remotely linking or uploading images is enabled, any user can post virtually any image in virtually any post. At least with a sig-image you'll see that picture every time that person posts. The potential for posting inappropriate images seems to me to be no greater with sig-images than it is now.

It would be ok with me if signatures were disabled completely.
See #2.

[pax]

This comes up from time to time, and the answer is gonna stay the same: no images in sigs, no avatars.

We might, at some time in the future, move to no colors in sigs and shorter sig files, too. Staff discusses it from time to time.

The fact is, we like THR as a discussion-based board rather than as a blinky, flashy image-based board.

That's the long and short of it.

pax