Although, it could be worse. There’s a forum that I used to frequent for a brief while, until it was taken over by gremlins and teenagers. They have it set up so that the signature field is not only impossible to turn off, but visually without any separation from the actual content of the post.
Obviously, that doesn’t stop people from putting all kinds of crap in there. So I’ll be reading “…and that’s why Bergman is the greatest director in the history of cinema. I like cookies!” And I’m thinking, that’s some interesting points you’re making there, but what’s with the cookies? And I’ll spend an hour trying to figure out the symbolic significance of cookies in the oevre of Bergman. Then, later, I’ll see a few more contributions by the same poster, and I’ll notice that they end every single post by declaring how much they like cookies. Right. It’s the freaking sig field.
I guess that’s why I keep coming back to the SDMB, in spite of its minor annoyances. Because on the outside lies barbarism.
What’s tedious or pretentious about it? I don’t always sign sign my posts but I often do because that’s how I was taught to end a letter. I also hit the space bar twice between the period at the end of a sentence and the beginning of a new one which I’m told isn’t necessary these days either.
I don’t mean to be impolite but I don’t know how else to delicately put it; I don’t really care if some people are annoyed by the practice. The people who are annoyed by the practice seem to be an insignificant minority. Putting a signature at the end of a post is so innocuous a practice that I can’t quite fathom how it could possibly annoy anyone in the slightest. We’re not talking about something not atrocious spelling, poor grammar, or typing in call capital letters which makes reading a post difficult. We’re talking about a name at the end of a post. But we all have our pet peeves I suppose. As for the signature field, I don’t use it because I don’t have any desire to use it.
I used to sign all of my posts because it felt like writing a letter to me. I felt like it was more personal. I stopped doing it because I saw all the uproar about it, but I sort of like it.
Look, I once was firmly entrenched in the “It kinda disrupts the flow of the conversation” camp, but now I’ve changed sides to the *“I really don’t have a right to tell others how to format their posts” *group.
I mean, I’ve never seen Shodan start a thread telling everyone else to sign their posts.
You guys are REALLY making me want to start signing my posts again. Those of you who like it are making me want to do it because I agree with you, and those of you who *dislike *it are making me want to do it because it will piss you the fuck off…Regards, TRM
You can track it by its mating call, which sounds like a saxophone being pushed into a Vitamix on low speed, then dialed slowly up to high. And its characteristic scent smells like a Cuban cigar being stubbed out on the hood of a 1953 Chevy.
