Back in the day*, sig lines were everywhere. Everyone had one. If you had a thread with fifty posts, it was a good bet that forty five of them at the very least would include a sig line. Sig lines were a part of a person’s identity, and the sum total of them were a part of the board’s identity.
Lately, they’ve become endangered around here. It seems that less than ten percent of all posts have them. You can go through several threads without seeing a single sig line.
I’m only curious about this because it’s the exact opposite of what I see on every other board I go to. Elsewhere in the world, sig lines now take up for space and a lot more bandwidth than actual posts. They’ve got pictures, videos, and all kinds of other wasteful stuff. And people keep making them bigger and bigger.
*For those who are wondering, “the day” was roughly the start of 2001 to summer of 2003.
I know what you mean, ITR, and it’s not just the sigs - something about the board has changed since I joined but it’s difficult to say exactly what it is.
Hey Flutterby I remember your sig - it’s good to see a surviving piece of the Board that Was.
IIRC, it’s always been a custom here (not a firm and fast rule, just a suggestion) since day 1 that you use your sig line on your first post in a particular thread, then leave it off for any subsequent posts in that thread. When the Board changed to the new version, the administrators decided to try leaving the sig box checked by default, but eventually were persuaded by the users to turn it off by default. We (at least I) were not happy with forgetting to turn the button off, to comply with the unwritten rule.
As far as funny videos or anything along those lines, we’ve never been able to do that here. Smart move, especially at the times the hampsters were running slow. Forces you to make your points in your words, not by playing some animation or graphic.
True, but they seemed more prevalent in a previous version of the board when the default was also off. I know I almost always forget to put mine up, while I almost never forgot back in the day. I assume it’s just that the Sig button blends in better in some small way.
Hmm, on preview, I think I see what it is. It’s not so much that the button blends in, but that it’s out of the way. IIRC, the old boards placed the various option buttons between the typing field and the Submit button. Now, the option buttons are below the Submit button (and above a second set of Submit and Preview buttons, for some reason). Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. . .
My sig line is made from a specially imported font. Very rare and expensive material. Only those who are smart can see the wonderfully witty and wise words.
Glancing at my own post
… ahhaha… yes, I can see it… ahhaha… umm… how delightful!
As far as I’m concerned, after you see the same ones over and over, they just become very irritating. I only use mine when someone might mistake a post of mine as serious when it’s obvious (to me) that it was meant to be comical, but may not be taken that way. This has happened a number of times, for reasons I can’t comprehend, so to be sure I use it occasionally.
You know, I’ve also forgotten what mine says. I try to post it once a thread (although sometimes I purposefully don’t post it), but more often than not I just forget. Hmmm, lets see…
I dunno. I like to run my sig. They can get boring after a while, but that’s one reason I change mine at irregular intervals.
Bersides, I like to see how long it takes people to react to them, or if they never do because they’re too obscure or otherwise unintelligible.
