IMPORTANT: User Signatures

Hey!!!! Who let the newbie in here? This guy has a low post count AND has not been here that long.

Rookies should be seen and not heard

Now go fetch us adults some coffee!

 

I, like many, want to see sigs. Just not more than 6 lines or so.

Those are my personal blogs and one is even directly education related, is that a problem?

 

Maybe, maybe not. I think this whole thing came about because people are putting urls to other sites in their signature. I don't know what the tolerance level here is for that. I'd check with Chip.

 

But can't the bad guys just insert an image + name, that serves the same function as a promotional signature?

--John Bear
Not the largest Pontiac dealer in Ontario

 

Hopefully this all boils over soon so I can put my pretty pink and purple signature back.

How come my smilies aren't even working? (I mean by not adding them manually)

 

Hi guys - I'd like to give you my take on this. There are people who put links to their schools/degree programs in their sig lines. I have no problem with that. There are people who put links to their blogs or whatever in their sig lines and that might be a problem depending on the blog but in general, I have no problem with that. There are people who put links to (possibly) helpful sites in their sig lines. This tends to be related to the topic of a specific thread. Within the context of that thread it's OK. However, because it's in their sig line it's going to appear in every post they make, regardless of the relevancy. That makes it "advertising" in my book and so it's not OK. I'll paste the link into the body of the thread and erase it from the sig line, send a message to the author explaining the whole deal and ask them not to replace the ad in their sig line. No one ever replaces the ad. Most of these posters disappear forever. Some write back and say "I'm sorry." That's not a problem. We all make little mistakes. But by far, the largest category consists of the people who who are blatantly trying to spam the board. There are dozens of these every week. Their tactics have become more sophisticated over time. There actually are little sleeper cells of spammers preparing to wake up and clog up our cute little board with nasty little spammy messages. Because we spend so much time taking out the trash we get a bit hardened to this and sometimes we shoot first and ask questions later. If anyone thinks they've been edited unfairly please let us know. I think I'm correct when I say that 100% of the people who have protested have had their sigs replaced. We like this feedback so don't be shy. Thanks for your contributions everybody!

 

It's a good idea in terms of helping those who are annoyed by signatures but it's damn annoying to people using the site on cell phones or just casually browsing, reading a few posts and needing immediate context.

Personally speaking, I would rather not have to click and scroll to determine if someone knows what they're talking about in regards to a particular program they're commenting on. I won't lose sleep over it but I wanted this opinion out there before someone writes the sinai codex to make this happen globally

 

Enabling html for users is a big "no-no". It would allow malicious users to perform various exploits.

 

Yes, HTML in signatures is not going to happen for security reasons. When I do finally get around to migrating all of the current users to a different usergroup, then I can at that point restore BB Code and other stuff (like smilies) to signatures. This will keep the new and low-post-count posters from having sigs.

However, just today I had to deal with another poster, who spammed his product right in his username. So now I've had to adjust settings to keep that from happening. It's really annoying. This is such a time sink and it was a nonexistent problem 3 or 4 years ago.

 

Oh, that's interesting. I just assumed that IMG tages were turned off when html was turned off. That is a great solution as long as people don't start putting ad banners in their signature.

 

I just tried it but it doesn't work for me. I think John has some special permissions. My control panel says:

Can Upload Images for Signature: No

I'd change my sig to a small banner with my degrees listed in a jpg if it was possible.

 

Ohhhh, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

 

The signature spammers are unlikely to upload images; the primary reason they spam degreeinfo is because we have a pretty high Google page rank, so by putting signature spam in their profile, it looks like we are linking back to whatever crappy site they are trying to promote, which Google takes as an indication that their site is credible. Image spam won't do the same thing.

 

Does that mean you can turn on and enable IMG tags in signatures without having to turn on the rest of the html options?

 

So when are Distinguished Senior Members going to get authorization for unlimited sig lines?

 

The above being said, you have quite a good amount of Internet currency to leverage. Any guidelines as to what kinds of sites are appropriate for the wonderful link back karma? (Even if you're interested in that sort of thing)

Al

 

Set url links to attribute "no_follow", will eliminate any PR benefits due to backlinks from spammers.