# How does THIS happen? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [October 19, 2001, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348 "2001-10-19T02:11:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hombre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecb155/32.png) [@Hombre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hombre)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/1 "2001-10-19T02:11:13Z")
In [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=93735) thread, I jokingly used a line from a previous post from the venerable **Duck Duck Goose** as a sig. This post was on 10/17/01. I returned to an earlier thread of mine (my first, actually) to a [post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1690652#post1690652) dated 10/08/01 and saw that the sig in question had been reto-actively placed there. Is this normal? I only meant that as a one time sig. Now I’ve risked angering a fellow poster who I admire. Should you ‘clear-out’ sig lines from your profile if you don’t plan to use them again? How can I prevent retro-sigging in the future? ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/2 "2001-10-19T02:16:54Z")
Whatever sig is currently listed in your profile is the one that will show up for ALL of your posts, no matter when they were made. Every time the server displays one of your posts, it goes to your current profile to grab the sig. So if you don’t want that quote to appear in every single post you ever make on the board (well, at least the ones where you check the “include signature” box, anyway), you should probably change it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Hombre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecb155/32.png) [@Hombre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hombre)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/3 "2001-10-19T02:54:45Z")
Ok, I’m confused. So your sig does not remain a permanent part of your post? At any given moment your sig in every post you’ve ever made ( the ones where you checked the “include signature” box) will all be the same, it changes like your post count? ---
**Author:** ![Hombre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecb155/32.png) [@Hombre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hombre)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/4 "2001-10-19T02:56:46Z")
Sig test. ---
**Author:** ![Hombre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecb155/32.png) [@Hombre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hombre)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/5 "2001-10-19T02:59:07Z")
'Learn something new everyday… Thanks, MsWhatsit. William ---
**Author:** ![MoodIndigo1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@MoodIndigo1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoodIndigo1)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/6 "2001-10-19T07:05:43Z")
**Just testing**. I hope that sig thing shows up now. ---
**Author:** ![MoodIndigo1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@MoodIndigo1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoodIndigo1)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/7 "2001-10-19T07:16:18Z")
Hey, I entered a sig, posted, it showed up, and then I went and changed it on my profile, and POOF, gone from the post where it was a few minutes ago! I see your point, Hombre. This sig stuff works retroactively. ---
**Author:** ![Why\_A\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/13edae/32.png) [@Why\_A\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_A_Duck)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/8 "2001-10-19T11:57:27Z")
If you’ve noticed, when you do a post preview the previous posts all show up in reverse order below the reply box (unless it’s a really long thread). Look carefully and you’ll see that the previous posts don’t contain any sigs. This should be a clue that sigs aren’t treated as normal post text, but have a life of their own. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/9 "2001-10-19T13:54:36Z")
Back when we had UBB, you used to be able to change it with every post. You could play games with your sig, use it to respond to the post above yours, update it, treat it like a novel with subsequent “chapters”. Sometimes there’d be a time when a poster’s sig would be peculiarly relevant to the topic at hand, and he’d post, “I’ve got nothing to say except look at my sig”. And the sig “as was” would stay there in the thread, even if he’d changed it since then, so when you went back and looked at the old thread, his post made sense. But with vB, when you change your sig, it changes it in all 4,000 of your posts, so you can’t do this any more. And, Hombre, no problem, dude, it takes a **lot** more than that to piss Ducky off. 😉 And if I’m PO’ed, trust me, you’ll know it. Like right away. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Hombre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecb155/32.png) [@Hombre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hombre)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/10 "2001-10-19T20:15:00Z")
Good point, **pcubed**. **Ducky** , 'preciate it. I’m just glad I didn’t have a thousand posts out there with sigs. That would have had them wondering… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/11 "2001-10-19T21:11:51Z")
I would say it’s part of the way the database is designed; the post doesn’t contain the text of your sig, just a reference that it was there (think of the space this must save) so, when the post is trawled up (and it is literally built dynamically just for you when you view it) the signature text is inserted wherever the reference is found. It’s one of the key features of relational databases; the elimination of redundant data (although it would only truly be redundant if it never changed, which turns out not to be quite the case with signatures). I should mention that I know very little about the workings of the vB software, so I could be way wrong, but I am very familiar with relational database models, and that looks like what we’re seeing. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2001, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-happen/88348/12 "2001-10-19T21:24:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > \*\*I would say it’s part of the way the database is designed; the post doesn’t contain the text of your sig, just a reference that it was there (think of the space this must save) so, when the post is trawled up (and it is literally built dynamically just for you when you view it) the signature text is inserted wherever the reference is found. > > It’s one of the key features of relational databases; the elimination of redundant data (although it would only truly be redundant if it never changed, which turns out not to be quite the case with signatures). > > I should mention that I know very little about the workings of the vB software, so I could be way wrong, but I am very familiar with relational database models, and that looks like what we’re seeing. \*\* I can’t say how the vB database is designed, but I’ve put some thought into how I would design it, and that’s exactly what I would do for sigs. Course, that’s one of the easy parts…