That was what I thought.
And as such, shouldn’t a signoff that effectively counts as witnessing, outside GD, be moderated ?
If you’re referring to Miss “God Bless You Always” I’d question whether that was actually witnessing and not just really freaking annoying, especially combined with umpteen smilies.
But for the sake of principle, suppose someone signed off every post with “Jesus IS Lord and don’t you forget it!”. Since the signoff is not (I would hope) the substance of the post one could ignore it with some effort. More likely the person who was doing so would be unable to refrain from making similar comments in the body of the posts and thus would get warned/banned for that.
A Mod view would be nice to have, however.
If such a sign-off appeared in Great Debates, I would not pay any attention to it. If it had appeared in General Questions when I was Moderator there, I would also have paid no attention to it.
Witnessing goes a bit beyond a simple one-line expression of belief; it requires some sort of defense of that belief.
Beyond that, getting worked up over it seems to me to be too much like looking for a reason to be upset. We already hashed out the matter of innocuous if irritating sigs with Shodan’s sign off which was also an innocuous bit of text that some people decided was irritating simply because they found the poster irritating. Treating this sort of thing as a rule violation that requires staff intervention seems an awful lot like a violation of the old maxim to refrain from swatting gnats with a sledgehammer.
One Mod’s view.
What tom said.
While I agree with you that JOSH’s posts and sign-offs shouldn’t count as witnessing nor should be moderated, I disagree with your characterization of posters dislike of Shodan’s sign-off. I disliked them (usually) because they often seemed snarky, not because he irritated me. He would post this nasty screed and end with, “regards”. As a poster in general, I don’t find him any more irritating than any other poster I disagree with - his disingenuous sign-off aside.
Note, I was not one of the posters calling for them to be dropped. Just one posters opinion.
You can’t stop me from witnessing to my Church of Warm Regards!
Regards, -moriah
I…I…I think I actually feel your warm regards! My atheism seems to be slipping away from me even as I post this! I shall go forth and spread warm regards to everybody I know.
Regards, Czarcasm
Tom, it seems to me to be inappropriate to bring a specific poster into this thread in such a negative way – especially since it was so unnecessary to clarify your answer. Although that particular poster and I sometimes disagree, I have found him to be generally pleasant in the comments that I’ve read – except when he was being truly harassed or baited by a mod. His sign-off doesn’t have anything to do with witnessing and is irrelevant to the focus of the OP.
That’s sort of the test case for signoffs, though. And the amount of irritation people feel over one word like “Regards” is also relevant. If some posters can get that worked up over that, of course they don’t like James Otto Sweet Heart’s signoff either. But that doesn’t mean it’s against the rules.
We get almost no real witnessing here, I’m not sorry to say. We probably haven’t had an actual witnessing thread in years. The result is that people started using the word witnessing metaphorically for almost any kind of argument where a poster (usually the OP) wasn’t interested in reasoning and just wanted to repeat his or her claims over and over. The metaphor can be apt, but that’s not necessarily witnessing. And saying “God bless you” is nothing like witnessing.
You seem to be going out of your way to take umbrage.
Shodan’s sig is one that has been the point of multiple discussions following which the staff chose to leave him alone. That corresponds to this case, exactly, in that the current mood of the staff is that the sig in question is not something we intend to curtail.
The word I used to describe both sigs was innocuous.
The opposition to both sigs, as I described it, is rooted in friction between posters and not based on any inherent problem with the sigs.
Nothing I posted could be construed as an attack upon Shodan.
I suspect that you simply saw his name and mine and reacted without reading my post.
I’d have no problem with Holly’s sig line if she set it up as a sig line. I have that option turned off. But since she doesn’t have her “blessing” set up as a sig line, it’s visible in all her posts.
I don’t see what she’s doing as witnessing, but I do think she’s being a jerk by including that “message” in every post. No one wants to read the same statement over and over, not even one that’s witty or profound or thoughtful, which hers isn’t.
Since she insists on including her “blessing” in every post, even when it’s obviously meaningless, and even when many posters have told her how annoying it is, she’s being a jerk, and the mods should do something about it.
Seconded; JOSH is really starting to get on my nerves. I think she’s a nice enough, but it’s irritating as hell when she wastes so much space and repeatedly posts her whole “God Bless You” thing.
I thought there was a rule about manual signatures, where you must be reasonable. By reasonable, I think they mean (I’ll use me as an example) something like, “Regards, Anonymous User.” Something short that doesn’t annoy the shit out of people. I think it also says somewhere not to go too far with it. I think JOSH is going way too far with it, and someone needs to give her a moderator note telling her to stop. It’s irritating as hell.
Oh and:
God bless you always! :):)
Anonymous User
Just kidding.
To the last two posters, have you ever considered using Ignore feature rather than impose your own self on someone else, because that’s what you’re doing. If you can see from the mods responses in this thread already, it’s not against the rules what this poster is doing. So for christ sakes, fix the problem yourselves and get off your horses!
There is. I quoted that rule in another thread. At this point, the staff feels James Otto Sweet Heart’s signature is allowable under those rules.
And yes, as always, if a poster is so irritating that you absolutely cannot abide reading their posts because they make your skin crawl, use the ignore function. You can ignore anyone except the mods, and anyone except the mods can use this option.
How, exactly, is this situation different the the Shodan issue? Please read the rules on this and you will see she is within her rights. I agree with the lone cashew, don’t like it? Put her on ignore.
Agreed.
“Ignored” posts show up in quotes.
It’s different from “Regards, Shodan” because it’s much more difficult to ignore.
If you use firefox, I believe a greasemonkey script exists that will turn a section of text into a different bit of text of your choosing. I’ve never played with it myself but I imagine there’s some way to make it not display any text.
I agree with tomndeb. These things truly are innocuous. They’re so repetitious they barely register after awhile. I don’t have anyone on ignore. (I can say that, can’t I? 
) But I have developed the ability to not let little things get to me and to mentally filter out such minor annoyances. People can cope with it as they will, but to me, J.O. Sweet Heart’s sign-off has become so repetitious as to lose all meaning.
No, it’s not. Not really. At this juncture she posting almost exclusively in two pit threads, threads that are about her. She’s really easy to avoid.