Where Did Your Sig Go? Options

[Coomer]

It's gone, for the time being...signatures are being reformed so that we no longer have to suffer through waiting for everyone's large signature images to load. In the near future(hopefully later today), images will no longer be allowed in signatures.

Avatar settings have changed to allow for images up to 90x70 pixels, rather than the smaller 64 x64, but animations are still not allowed.

Feel free to discuss here in this thread. I'll go into my reasons for this if you guys want.

[Coomer]

1. Signature images are distracting, and they take away from the discussion in some cases. I often read questions about peoples' signatures in the on-topic forums, where it takes away from the topic that the thread is actually about.

2. Loading large signature images is slow. Not everyone can afford broadband, some people can't get broadband at their location(me), etc.

3. Hosted signatures take away from this site's bandwidth. When a large image(or several...lots of people's signature images are images uploaded onto their profile) from the 6GC server is loaded on every topic that a person posts on for every visitor, that adds up to a ton of bandwidth. True, caching helps immensely with this, but the site's server still takes a large bandwidth hit from signatures hosted on the site.

4. Large signature images often disrupt the flow of the page, forcing some people to scrolll sideways just to read a post(that is stretched by a large signature.) Unless I host signature all images on the site(and require an upload form for them), I can't control the size of people's signatures effectively. I experimented with using javascript to resize the display dimensions of the images, but it didn't work so well. Additionally, many people wouldn't read a rule outlining signature image size requirements. Others may be confused("What's a pixel?"), or not know how to resize an image.

5. People often host their signature images in their profile. This isn't so bad, if it's just a picture of their car, but when it's their name in a fancy font or whatever and nothing else, it should not be their. For the new stuff that I'm working on, this is very undesired, because it makes my random image generator display non-Celica images. Though management can and often does remove images in profiles, we can't see all of them and remove all non-Celica photos.

6. A discussion forum is made to be just that - a discussion forum. Photos at the bottom of every single person's post just takes away from this idea. If people want to look at photos, there are threads asking for photos, and member profiles.

That's why there currently are no images allowed in signatures. Though I can see why you guys like them.

The bottom line is that if people would listen to a rule and have small signatures(probably under 300x100 pixels), I'd probably put them back. But I can't require this due to the nature of linked images, and management doesn't have time to enforce stuff like this constantly.