I have to say, I like the sign offs, especially from Jim/What Exit? I always get his user name confused with Why Not, and it makes it easy to tell them apart. I think they are all cute, honestly. The posters that sign off are the ones I remember, for the most part. It’s sweet, I think.
You might be right.
Good day and felicitations to you, Ma’am (<bows low with a broad sweep of his Panama hat>),
P.G.T. Beauregard
Threads are conversatioins. We’re not wriing letters here. I have to agree that signing posts looks pretty dumb.
Well, you’re sincerely welcome. (And I’m a lady, not a guy. 
)
Nope. It’s the handle I allow strangers to use to contact me on the internet. It’s available for anyone who reads my posts, and wishes to address me.
My name is something else, and I may be neurotic about this, but I prefer to give it out individually to persons whom I wish to know it. I have given my name to a number of Dopers in private correspondance, but that is a sign of a more personal relationship, IMNSHO, than simply being someone I’ve exchanged posts with on the net.
Obviously, YMMV, but I really do see a difference between my name and my username.
And this is someone whose username is the same for almost all my internet activity and has been for more than 10 years, now.
For the OP, what I don’t understand is why the frustration with this behavior. Even if one thinks that the custom is useless and quaint, what does it harm anything? To pick an example not at random, I’ll admit that I tend to think of What Exit? as Jim, because of his signature, and it makes him a bit a more human for me. Different customs and different usages are part of what I like about the internet. And especially The Dope.
What difference does it make? If I asked you not to refer to me as Lib, the way most people do, would that seem reasonable?
When I opened this thread earlier today, I was mystified. That is, after I figured out it was about signing, and not about singing Posts. I was surprised at how little it took to get some folks from calm to furiously fuming and fulminating. What power there is in the letters of one’s own name! I had no idea.
Then, just now I came back, and I see it’s turned a corner into absurdity and grandiloquent politeness. You never know where an SDMB thread will go next.
I daresay there will be some sudden emotions this week among us US Dopers. The anticipation of Thanksgiving stirs a variety of very good and very bad echoes of Thanksgivings past. It’s a time of getting together with family (some of whom you don’t want to see) and of being apart from family (some of whom you really miss.) Maybe I shouldn’t have said any of that. I did. :rolleyes:
I always loved Trunk’s…(hmmm…is it Trunk I’m thinking of? It might be Tripler. I always confuse the two. But anyway! It’s one of them.)…sign off the best, because he always writes something different (and post related) right after it in the parenthesis.
…
Yes, why not?. I think people should expect to be addressed by their username (or maybe acronyms for really long usernames). Anything else is somehow a sign of intimacy that may or may not be welcome by a specific person.
If you like your friends to call you Lib, but prefer that people you don’t particularly like call you Liberal, that sounds reasonable. You should still expect to have some people call you Lib without you telling them to, but I think you have the right to ask them not to, if it bothered you.
In the particular case of LHoD, well, using it as a signature somehow gives anyone the right to call him by that name, I think.
I think SpazCat’s sig is brilliantly witty and I never get tired of reading it.
Cool, that was part of the reason I like having my first name out there. If there were not as many Jim’s on the board as there is, I probably would have had my user name changed to Jersey Jim instead of What Exit?
Strangely enough Liberal, I think you did ask me at one point not to call you Lib and I have honored your request almost all of the time. So, it would seem reasonable to me. **Excalibre ** was another poster that asked me not to call him Exy, I was diligent about not doing so, even though I think he was just making a point at the time and not really upset with me calling him Exy.
The only difference I see is that if Daniel signs his posts with his name and expects no one to use it that is very odd behavior. If he specifically did not want you to call him Daniel as he did not like you and did not want you to take a personal liberty with the use of his name, I could actually understand it to some degree. Either way it was still humorous for him to ask you not to use it and sign off on that very post, humorous at his expense by the way and not yours.
I hope this helps,
Jim
Maybe Daniel’s just a tad weird?
A Doper? Weird? C’mon.
I’ve been on older message board software that didn’t clearly indicate a poster’s name atop a quote box when quoted. I’ve seen people change their user names and been very confused reading older posts by them. I guess over time it became a habit. I sign emails at work too.
Sometimes I add a closing sentiment, such as “regards” or “respectfully,” which works better if my name follows.
I feel a sense of closure when I “sign” a post.
Is it really bad enough to constitute arrogance? Is it really eating up board space, compared to posting something like “ummmmm…boobies!”?
I don’t pad my post count in forum game type threads…on any board…although I must admit sometimes I try to make jokes and puns. I don’t have sig lines or ascii art. I hardly ever use text size settings. I try not to make the sort of sweeping pronouncements that look like arrogance to me. I try, imperfectly, not to confuse my personal opinions with laws of nature or arbitration of taste.
Except for indulging myself in occasional grammar and spelling nitpicking, and offering what I consider mild corrections in some history topics, I try not to dictate word choice and stylistic changes to others.
I have a hard time seeing myself as a major sinner when it comes to arrogance or clogging the board. But, if there’s really enough outrage, I guess I could force myself to change my ingrained habit. If you really want to assert control over my posting style, that is. I would prefer to see a consensus of some sort before struggling to permanently alter my habits, though. Does it really bother people that much? It seems like a small thing to me.
No way. Never happened. Must have been a misunderstanding. Please feel free to call me Lib. Or asshole, or whatever… 
Are you thinking of Merijeek? He used to sign off with “Joe” and a pertinent comment but I haven’t seen it in a while. He was pithy with that.
Thometimeth pithy ith good.
Listen. Everyone’s missing a crucial point here…
You can use sign-offs to make yourself seem much smarter than you actually are.
Stranger
For some odd reason, I’ve never signed my posts.
–The Honourable Antony deVere-Tollemache-Cholmondely-ffarquharson-Vennegoor of Hessellink-McCorquodale Of That Ilk
But how many people have actually enjoyed, Steven?