Signature Permissions Unexpected Removal

[EB64]

My guess is they have a new forum lined up to go with the site redesign they've been working on.
Probably, once the new design goes up, the new forums will have signatures turned back on, though none of us know what restrictions there will be.

[DRNA]

Not totally related to the spam but we were having some issues with users trying to put bad things in signatures and others who were circumventing the rules we had in place. As of this morning I have disabled signatures until such time as I can get the issues resolved.

Any word or news or findings since November? TY

[dmark101]

It's odd to me that I didn't really care about signatures before they were taken away. I had one, but it was not a big deal to me that they were removed. However, seeing certain folk (generally those who are more elevated that mere "members") seems rather unfair. Dare I say, nearly elitist to a degree. If the majority cannot have signatures, then all should be removed. Just saying...

same here. doesn't bother me if i had one or not. i think the admins were just lazy applying the restriction to ALL user groups.

[LethalLethality]

Month and a half later... what's the status of this?

[Gaming_Gal]

I'd also like to hear a blue name pipe in to this thread with an update.

*looks hopeful*

[Amorey]

And here I am...again

So we have the new Producer's Letter today and I was hoping for a small update on this issue but I guess there are still none.

Still hoping to hear something soon

[Devolved]

And here I am...again

So we have the new Producer's Letter today and I was hoping for a small update on this issue but I guess there are still none.

Still hoping to hear something soon

Continuing uncontrolled spam bots.
Daily examples of insults and profanity from/towards members.

If there's no plan to deal with those, I don't see any time being spent on allowing us our signatures back.

[Marancil]

There is a plan.

It was mentioned somewhere that a Forum Overhaul is in the pipeline, but it is not as easy as that. I have been through these things, the latest was when Gearbox moved over from a vBulletin forum to something completely different, Discourse, yet modern and cunning .

From this: http://oldforums.gearboxsoftware.com...xsoftware.com/
To this: http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/

In the process we sundowned the old forums, changed login method to something called Shift: https://shift.gearboxsoftware.com/home and started all anew. The old forum could NOT be transferred to the new.

Now, if Gearbox, with all its resources, could not save the old forum while moving to a new platform, I suspect Turbine may be in for similar challenge and need to make all those hard decisions. Personally I am all against it. New forum software, sure, loosing 8 years of history, not so much. I have seen other transitions and the amount of information and data that was lost in the process would make stones cry.

This could also explains the lack of efforts towards having someone working over Christmas cleaning the Forums. I have proposed granting some trusted and experienced members moderating powers, but I have yet to see any outcome of that. To me it is an obvious move, grant the community some measure of self-regulation (but keep a forum backup handy).

[Amorey]

...I have proposed granting some trusted and experienced members moderating powers, but I have yet to see any outcome of that. To me it is an obvious move, grant the community some measure of self-regulation (but keep a forum backup handy).

This would be the most obvious move but my personal professional experience is that recruiting, training and managing even just 2 or 3 or more volunteer moderators can take a considerable amount of effort and time and trust. It usually works better when a game company is about to open a brand new forum and the CM has the time and resources to dedicate to it. These forums are 8+ years old, they have seen already several changes at the top, and changes in the game focus and to suddenly introduce moderation in a big way could upset people even more.

It would be nice if we had some consistency in moderation and day-to-day admin tasks over the years. I do still hope we will see some improvements and it would be nice to know if this signature issue can be resolved . My natural instinct as a forum admin myself is to wish for the forums to look tidy and neat as much as possible but that is easily said than done on a forum as old as this one. Wiping out would be very drastic and I am not sure it would be well received by the community at this point ...now if Turbine is able to work a way to transfer the old forum over to a new platform that would be nice ...we can only hope

[Marancil]

Yup, plus one to all that. Seems like we both have experience on this, so FRELORN; just click the right checkboxes, Amorey and I can handle it.

[Amorey]

Yup, plus one to all that. Seems like we both have experience on this, so FRELORN; just click the right checkboxes, Amorey and I can handle it.

Always happy to lend a hand or two, of course

So we are all back to work after the holidays, I noticed some of the 'festive' spam posts are getting deleted so maybe we can hope for a small update on this issue from Frelorn

[SpartacusPierce]

So penalize everyone for the misdeeds of a few.. smh