[wp-forums] Sigs

Wed Feb 8 16:35:50 GMT 2006

Just speaking for myself here, but I assumed that sigs were not allowed 
when I first joined the forum. Not because it's written anywhere, or 
because it needed to be, but for the simple fact that it's not a feature 
in the forum software. If there's not an option to automatically add a 
sig in a  forum, I usually assume that's because at some point it's been 
decided not to allow or encourage sigs.

And just speaking for the aesthetic point of view - the way the forums 
are designed makes it very hard to distinguish sigs from the rest of the 
message. I personally took this as further discouragement against 
signatures, but then again, I'm not a huge fan of big lumbering sigs 
even in phpBB or vBulletin forums where they are distinct.

No forum anywhere is a true democracy. This one is far more 
collaborative than most, which is the nature of open source, but like 
any forum that's going to remain useful among spammers and general 
nonsense, it requires some policing, which means there will be rules 
imposed upon all users, both implied and explicitly stated.

And just for the record, if it were a democracy, I'd definitely vote 
against sigs. You can argue all day long about the philosophy behind it, 
but the simple truth is that if they were allowed it would get out of 
hand. Take a look at any forum anywhere that allows sigs, and you'll see 
what I mean. For every user that has a modest sig, there are 5 who push 
the limits as far as they'll go, and then some.

Mel 