Pissed at arbitrary and stupid board rules

The BBQ Pit
1

I have had the same sig for over 2 years now. I sometimes change the third line, but other than that it stays the exact same length. I obey all of the board rules, use it only one time per thread, etc… About a month before the crash, I added a fourth line and was contacted by the mods telling me that it was now too long. NBD, I simply removed the fourth line and replaced the third with a quote from Family Guy-" I’m a pompus little antichrist who will probobly give up his plans for world domination when he falls in love with a rough trick named Jim". No dice I was told. I figured that this was because the third quote wraped around to take up so I changed it so that everythig ran together. Frankly, it looked like shit, but I was being a happy widdle good doper. The crash erased all of that and reset things to the way they were before December 7, including my sig. My current sig is exactly the same as it’s been for the last two years. Tonight I get another e-mail: Your sig is too long, I know you changed it but the changes were lost in the crash. This pisses me off no end. As a point of fact, and to repeat, my sig is now exactly the same as it’s always been.

I have seen people on these boards with sigs that would shame a Shakespere soliloquy. It pisses me off that every bit of originality that we try to express is being ruthlessly crushed lately. The new version of vB software initially allowed people to customise their own tiles instead of the generic “member”. Uh-uh, can’t have that said the administration. A few simple rules- no labeling yourself “mod”, “admin” or “BANNED” if you’re not would have solved the problem completely, but noooooo. Sigs are fine- as long as they fit into exact tiny little guidelines. The reason given is bandwith. I don’t buy it, if every member added an extra line to their sig that number compared with the total number of lines on the board would be insignifigent, especially if everyone follows the “one sig per thread rule”. The martial atmosphere that has been created lately is doing a lot to stifle the fun and creativity these boards offer.

What really pisses me off, however, is not the rule itself, but changing what has always been acceptable on the boards with no reason given. “You’ve followed the rules, but now we’re changing them, clean up your act” is a piss poor way to run things, IMHO. To reiterate yet again * my sig is the same as it’s always been *, and yet I am now breaking the rules. I suspect that I’ll have to change it yet again, for no good reason, and that truly sucks hippopotamus cocks. Here’s my sig, included as part of this post, so y’all can judge for yourself:

Cecil said it. I believe it. That settles it.

Relax, I’m not as Dave as I look!- A Wallified sig!

The only male doper passed around to all the women at ChickDope!

2

:rolleyes:

What, no Mod/Nazi comparisons?

You’re slipping, Dave.

:wink:

3

WTF? How can it be a bandwidth problem? Three short lines.

I don’t get that at all.

4

Yeah, you’re right. It can’t be a bandwidth problem otherwise they would have reopened that other board to try to alleviate it, right?

You say you don’t understand it as if that were a remarkable thing.

It ain’t.

Not understanding gravity won’t save you from going “splat” should you jump off a building. The effect is there whether you understand it, or not.

In this case you’re taking other people with you when you insist on jumping,. It ticks me off to know end to see someone getting all pissy at somebody who’s looking out for the greater good and providing a service, especially when they wear their ignorance of the forces at work as if it were armor.

You know that the server has to dig into your profile for your sig each and every time somebody opens a thread with it in it, don’t you?

Opening a thread is one operation for the server. It’s a seperate operation for each sig it has to get. It has to do this each and every time a thread is opened.

I’ll give you a thought experiment.

(Don’t really do it.)

Imagine a thread with 40 posts, but no sigs.

Now imagine a thread with 40 posts each having a sig.

The latter takes almost 40 times more effort for the server than the former.

It slows things down a lot.

It’s only feasible if the amount of information the server has to get each time is minimal, and people don’t use their sig a lot.

See?

5

Well said, Scylla.

Dave, were they somehow rude or snippy in how they phrased the request? I somehow doubt they’re using a three-line sig as an excuse for targeting a well-liked poster. Try not to take it personally.

Of course, I can’t even remember the last time I used a sig line! :eek:

6

My fury is such that I’m going to march right into the offices of the Reader and demand my money back.

What?

7

Dave, I’m not going to argue with you. I’m simply going to state our policy.

Our limit on signature files is four (4) lines and/or spaces, total.

While some people find two or three lines and/or spaces is sufficient for their needs, five is right out. Six will make me want to come over to your house and slap you.

Let me say that again, please:

**You may use signature files in your message boards posts at the Straight Dope Message Board.

HOWEVER, SIGNATURE FILES MUST BE NO MORE THAN A TOTAL OF FOUR (4) LINES AND/OR SPACES.**

We also request you use them no more than once per thread (short threads) or once per page (long threads).

Be considerate of your fellow Dopers, please; share the bandwidth. This is especially true in these days when we have huge demand and not so much supply.

Hope this makes our policy clear.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

8

A thread with 40 posts, each with a sig, is twice the effort, not 40 times.

There are 40 “SELECTS” for the posts, and 40 “SELECTS” for the sigs. 40 versus 80.

9

I think a larger point is being overlooked here: weirddave has had the same sig lines for three years. Aren’t they getting just a tad stale? It’s like telling the exact same joke every time you meet someone, even if you’ve met them hundreds of times before.

10

And here we have another case of a simulpost missing a Moderator/Admin post due to the Board speed issue.

My post was only me being anal about describing the function of the software. I did not and do not disagree with in any way the post limitations that Tuba et al have put into place, past, present, or future. At all. Let’s just make that perfectly clear here.

11

Hmm. Just a thought: Could I sell my sig rights to another more ego-dependent Doper?

'Scuse me while I log on to eBay.

12

C’mon now, how does having to chop of your sig equate having “every little bit of creativity” being “ruthlessly crushed?”

You wouldn’t happen to be a union spokesman, would you?

13

I’ve never liked the extra lines of underlines anyway. But then, I tend to be a minimalist.

14

dave, as of this, you’ve logged around 2700 posts. let’s say that you used your sig on only 700 of them. Adding another line changes every instance that your sig appears, adding an extra line to each one. that’s 700 lines, which is a nice-sized thread. If everyone increased one line, you’d have larger amounts of bandwidth being taken up just by everyone’s extra line. Imagine if 20,000 people added an extra thread each. I know it’s a slippery slope thing, but adding something seemingly small affects the big Dope.

15

I don’t understand your point, Dave. The guideline has been 4 lines for an awfully long time. The rule was duly announced and explained when it was instituted. Your sig is 5 lines long–3 lines of text and 2 lines of, well, lines. So it exceeds the maximum sig length and you were asked to change it. What’s the problem?

16

Dave, dear, your sig line has been in violation of the 4 lines & spaces max requested by the admins since they first requested it well over a year ago (I can’t find the thread now - sorry - perhaps Tuba remembers the date or has it bookmarked or something).

Frankly, at the time they asked that of us, I wondered why you felt you were special enough to think you could get away with ignoring the request, but I didn’t say anything because I figured that was between you and them. Why they overlooked it for so long is beyond me. Now they’re just catching up with enforcing what you should’ve been doing all along.

Grin and bear it - it’s not that big of a deal.

Besides, I don’t see what’s so bad about removing the spaces and using the underline coding so your sig line reads like this:

Cecil said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Relax, I’m not as Dave as I look!- A Wallified sig!
The only male doper passed around to all the women at ChickDope!
(P.S. You could also do what I do, and copy and paste it into the body of your posts so it doesn’t drag on the server to retrieve it. Just a thought.)

17

This is not what really happens. The query that displays your name, location and number of posts is the same query that returns your signature, just an additional field in the query. All of your individual information is kept in one table.

18

Y’know, Dave, I can think of about a hundred better things to get worked up about. So you have to take the lines between the lines out. So?

19

Maybe it’s not significant, bandwidth-wise, but it does make me use my mouse-wheel a tiny bit more, and that can’t be good for the life of my middle-button, or even my middle-finger. Jeez Dave, you’re contributing to the wear-and-tear on my middle finger, over here. (I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard that one.

Dropping the separating lines is a good idea.

Hey, you could even lose the line about being “passed around” at Chickdope. It’s kinda, well… weird.
:wink:

20

A small question here – the length of a line varies according to the size of the viewer’s monitor and the size of the window, not to mention the font size. Is there a “standard” line length the mods and admins have in mind?