Signature Guidelines: Absolutely NO animated images in signatures

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Sapience you are welcome to continue your experiment with images in the signatures.

Expecting people to play nice and follow the rules is is not going to work. You or someone else on the community team is going to be spending a lot of time ripping links out of signatures, creating warnings and infractions. It will be interesting to see how many days you put with it before you disable images.

[Taravith]

Unless, as some have pointed out with the current min width of the forums, your viewing size is 1024 width. At which point a 600px wide image is 60% of your screen. Even at 350 it's 35%.

Well if my viewing size is 1024 width, I have to scroll sideways to use the forum so I'm having bigger problems than having a sig covering only slightly more than half my screen (and how is that even a problem in the first place?)

[Eartholloth]

it's staying up for now. I'm trying to get a custom avatar link instead of upload, but can't promise anything.



Unless, as some have pointed out with the current min width of the forums, your viewing size is 1024 width. At which point a 600px wide image is 60% of your screen. Even at 350 it's 35%.

Mine is a little more then that but not much. I am one of the ones with a small monitor still. I think it's like 17" or 18" monitor! I know shocking & I play LOTRO on it. LOL

[Ecsmyth]

I kind of agree that 350px width seems quite small (was taken aback a bit once I got my sig-image uploaded at how small it was), but can totally understand not wanting to have massive signatures taking lots of time to load. If a change is possible (as in increasing the cap, not removing images), might I suggest a compromise between 350 and 600? Split the difference and go with 475...only 46% of the viewing area, still less than half .

But if choices are keep as is or lose it, I would vote for keeping as is; allows some life and color.

Now let's all hope people can learn to play nice (but...ya'know..don't hold your breath or anything).

[Maxal]

Now let's all hope people can learn to play nice (but...ya'know..don't hold your breath or anything).

This is the saddest part of it. folks will push and push until this nice little feature is removed. I am hoping with a new forum folks will just follow the rules. It is so nice not to see the beat on the forums page after how many years.

Plus these really work well on the tablets and phones. I can actually read the forums while traveling now.
'

[Crell_1]

The 350px width limit for signatures is just fine. I wish we could get our post content to scale down to about double that size. It would be very handy when I've got lots of windows open.


*Additionally, the forums just ignored my default subscription selection when I attempted to make the post the first time.

[Shriya]

I'm glad we don't have the animated signatures. Granted, I know there are people who also play on adoptable sites and "need" to put their critters in signatures and such to get them to grow up, but here I like the clean signatures.

OT: @Maxal: Have you figured out what's behind the waterfall?

[Laire]

Like Whiteberry said, give us a chance to comply. Honestly, this ability to use our own made signature is the best thing about the new forums for me. Give it some time for rules to stabilize as you add them and for the rush from this new ability to settle down.

Hopefully people won't cross the line after a few days.

I have to agree-- I think giving people a few days to catch up is the way to go. I personally like the option, though I'll be refraining from creating anything until I know if it's staying or not =)

[Hyaline]

I have to agree-- I think giving people a few days to catch up is the way to go. I personally like the option, though I'll be refraining from creating anything until I know if it's staying or not =)

Well, I went back to the template I made using screenshots from the game to make game cards with my husband for other players and took some elements to make a quick one that didn't give me that much work (now). So if they get taken, I didn't put that much effort into it. Still like the end result, even though it's far from a pro job

[Saintjoan]

I like the new look to the community site.

[RingOfFire]

As I run a few forums myself, I have disabled the ability to add images to signatures because it forces you to police them and when/if you do remove one, you get "Well, how come XYZ can have one like that and I can't??".

Furthermore, when an external image is used, they can very easily be changed to something that goes against the guidelines or, if they use a free image hosting site, you get those "Bandwidth Exceeded" images stuck on your forums.

Better to remove them.

I have to agree with Elderban when it comes to this. As far as I can see, allowing images in signatures -- especially if hosted off-site -- would create the potential for a lot of conflicts over moderating them, among other things such as data usage.

Personally, I think the very furthest things can be taken without the pro's being outweighed by the con's would be custom avatar images, so long as any file size limit is set to accommodate only a static image and not an animated one -- and that would still be stretching things a bit far, IMHO.

[Grhysli]

Have to admit that I can see where moderating forum signatures could get to be a chore.
If it gets out of hand I have no problem with Sapience removing that feature just to make life easier for the forum mods.

It would be nice if the Signature creation page had a pane that is 125 high x 350 wide with the instruction "Your image MUST fit inside this window"
Much the same kind of thing as i have seen on several websites for creating custom Avatars where the file size is limited to fit within a pre-determined window.

That would likely take some work to get up and running though.

[xusia]

The image is oversize and doesn't relate directly to LOTRO and is basically a billboard for your site. So it's advertising and a violation of the guidelines.

Whiteberry's is right on the line. It is at least LOTRO related, though still closer to billboard for a site than a signature identifying you.

I'm trying to work out how to get a full list into the sig creator or at least adding it to the community guidelines. The need to make it tri-lingual may be a challenge in the signature creator page.
I'm already seeing every argument that was used against my decision to allow this on the forums. I may have to admit I was dead wrong and remove the ability.

I've updated the OP with a much more complete list.

Thanks for the clarification.

I find that on many sites, people signatures become so large and unwieldy, that they end up being the focal point. Reading a thread can become quite hard as a result, especially with lower resolution screens. So if the process can be effectively policed but at the same time allow people to identify themselves uniquely then it's a win, win situation.

[GregJL]

The image is oversize and doesn't relate directly to LOTRO and is basically a billboard for your site. So it's advertising and a violation of the guidelines.

Whiteberry's is right on the line. It is at least LOTRO related, though still closer to billboard for a site than a signature identifying you.

I'm trying to work out how to get a full list into the sig creator or at least adding it to the community guidelines. The need to make it tri-lingual may be a challenge in the signature creator page.
I'm already seeing every argument that was used against my decision to allow this on the forums. I may have to admit I was dead wrong and remove the ability.

I've updated the OP with a much more complete list.

I may have to admit I was dead wrong and remove the ability.

I may have to admit I was dead wrong

Ok, who are you, and what have you done with the real Sapience?

[Sito_Origami]

The image is oversize and doesn't relate directly to LOTRO and is basically a billboard for your site. So it's advertising and a violation of the guidelines.

Whiteberry's is right on the line. It is at least LOTRO related, though still closer to billboard for a site than a signature identifying you.

I'm trying to work out how to get a full list into the sig creator or at least adding it to the community guidelines. The need to make it tri-lingual may be a challenge in the signature creator page.
I'm already seeing every argument that was used against my decision to allow this on the forums. I may have to admit I was dead wrong and remove the ability.

I've updated the OP with a much more complete list.

Dare I say that the old forum's functionality wherein it automatically permitted only a signature image showing LOTRO character name was probably not such a bad idea?

[manstan]

I'm still looking for that User CP. It is no where in my account.
duh! never mind.

[Nakiami]

Some of these picture sigs I've seen around are just too large. When your sig is ten times the height of your post, something is wrong.

[camillionaire]

Thanks for the ability to add our own sigs, I really like to create them, I hope mine is ok!

[poxnoxious]

Just checking if me cigar is on fire!

[Mar-Evayave]

This should probably be added to the OP. I had to go track this down just now because I couldn't find it posted anywhere else.

It should allow a total 500 characters and a total of 4 lines with 1 image allowed. If that bloats and people have more words in their sigs than in their posts, it will be reduced.

Now to go add a 4th line.

[Widoch]

The size limitations are fine. I really appreciate letting us have a signature and hopefully, we as a community can help police ourselves a bit so that they don't need to be pulled.

[Tenuke]

Now this is good news. I have been wondering quite a lot why it seems to be allowed for ppl to have signatures that fill about 1/4 of my screen.. And Im using 1900x1200 Resolution..
Is it OK for me to start spamming reports about too big signature images?-)
Seems like every of these old&common
signatures are too big to start with

P.S. This image was first of such signatures what I came past when went to look for an example. Those img's are 489x150. When 350x125 are allowed.
P.P.S. I would think about limiting the size of signature itself too, not just the image sizes. Some ppl have been loving to write some nonsense to their signatures with some super big fonts in bright red, and darn that annoys one easily when those ppl post actively into some thread.

[Khafar]

signatures are too big to start with

I agree, and I think a hodge-podge of images in them makes for even worse visual clutter than they were before. However, my solution to that is for me to turn them off. I've had them off since 2007, and they're staying off. I get to see them whenever the forums have Logged Me Out Yet Again , and between the bright pink ones Sapience did, various images, and way too much text in some... ugh. I really need to just hide them permanently for this site via Stylish.

Speaking of Stylish, I've also cleaned up my own view of the forums, removing Post Count, Join Date, and Location, reducing the size of the avatar images (40x40 instead of 80x80), hiding all the forums I never visit (which leaves about 12 visible on the forum list page). I don't have to push all those changes on anyone else if they like it the way it is.

Khafar

[dmark101]

i'm okay with having size and image restrictions on your signature. i have them in place on a couple of forums that i maintain, so this decision is understandable.

what i would like to be allowed are the OLD signature pictures that were generated by the old site. i know those images are larger than the current requirements, but a lot of us loved the layout and design, even if the crafting information never properly updated.

this is really the only consideration i would ask in regards to the signatures.

[Duathrandir]

I'd prefer the avatar being customizable in stead of the signature - at least with link to a hosted picture, but since that's not possible at the moment, allowing signature pictures is the way to go if you don't want everything to be grey in grey without ways to quickly identify posters in long threads, etc. In my humble opinion

Yeah, I liked the custom avatars too. Why'd they go away?