Signature sizes and smooth sailing

[Onkel Neal]

So, we are coming back to a certain rule here that some people just cannot seem to abide ;)

Signatures:
A friendly reminder, please keep your signature images to a reasonable size, no larger than 220 high, 640 wide. Max file size is 200KB. Sigs that are political or religous in nature may only be displayed in General Topics. Only naval-oriented sigs are allowed in the naval and game forums.

The reason for this rule: To keep the forum smooth, without right/left scrolling bars, and massive download transfer for images and animated gifs that can run up to a MB or more.

Over the years, we have increased the size limits, they are more than triple what they used to be. It won't be long before some people are inserting their Facebook pages here as a sig. :arrgh!:

The question I put to you: does size matter? Do you care if someone has a sig 600 high and 1200 wide, or a gif that loads 1 MB+ each time you open a thread? Does it impact your forum viewing? Or do you not even notice it or care? Should we have a limit and what should it be? And how do we handle those who are practicing Lebensraum with our monitors?

Thanks for your time.
Neal
SUBSIM

[nikimcbee]

http://i.imgur.com/FgyUM.gif

Too big or under the limit?
@ Neal I got the postal-mailz from you.:up::rock: Thanks.

[VONHARRIS]

I am only posting and viewing threads in the SH3 forums.
I have never came across of such big signatures.

[HunterICX]

Yes, size does matter.

while some might go perhaps 20% over the allowed limits I'm fine with that but let's not have it going out of hand so that the forum lay out starts to get screwed or when I have to abuse my mouse scroll just to get to the next member's post.

I think the current dimensions are perfect.

as for filesize leave it 200 - 300kb top.
1 Mb Gif files are uncalled for at while they won't bother me at home on my own PC but at work on a not so state of the art pc it does bother me as big animated gif files just lag the browser and makes it a pain to navigate a thread.

HunterICX

[Sailor Steve]

I find it annoying when a sig is larger than the pictures people post in the threads. That's way too big. Yes, size does matter.

Too big or under the limit?
Technically speaking it's more than five times the 200 MB file size limit. My personal problem is that my old computer hates all gifs. Other than the lag every time I read one of your posts it's kind of cute.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Technically speaking it's more than five times the 200 KB file size limit.

Fixed :doh:

It doesn't affect me when I'm on a PC, but if I use my phone (often) it can be a bit annoying. I think the current rules are fine, with some slight moderator leeway - particularly if it's a subsim* related pic, less so if it is political or a. n. other.


*and obviously flight sim :03:

Edit - the only gif I don't find annoying when it's repeated on a page is Steve's cat one.

[Takeda Shingen]

I don't think that any of us want to go around with calipers, so to speak. Unless a signature is high or wide enough to make reading problematic, I don't really care too much. File size is a different matter, however. Too many large files used as signatures do make an impact on the loading of the threads. A 1 MB signature is obnoxiously large in that aspect. Imagine if everyone had one.

[mookiemookie]

Sig file size never bothered me much, but I guess that's because everyone around here kept them smallish. Big huge images that take up 60% of the screen are annoying though.

I'm more concerned with the part that says

"Sigs that are political or religous in nature may only be displayed in General Topics. Only naval-oriented sigs are allowed in the naval and game forums."

So if you were to take a strict interpretation of that rule, my sig would be out of bounds for posting in General Games discussion? There's no real way to enforce this. You can't have two sigs at once, and your old posts update with your new signature when you change it. So I can't have a SH3 signature, post something in the SH3 forum, then jump back over to GT, change my sig and post there. All my posts will reflect my current sig.

I understand the spirit of the rule, but there's some practical problems with its execution.

[Jimbuna]

I don't think that any of us want to go around with calipers, so to speak. Unless a signature is high or wide enough to make reading problematic, I don't really care too much. File size is a different matter, however. Too many large files used as signatures do make an impact on the loading of the threads. A 1 MB signature is obnoxiously large in that aspect. Imagine if everyone had one.

Aye that...in fact the current allowance is quite generous IMO...the other two forums I frequent have bigger restrictions.

[Jimbuna]

@ Neal I got the postal-mailz from you.:up::rock: Thanks.

Same message from me as well Neal...I left a thanks in the moderator section yesterday but not sure if you saw it. :sunny:

[Takeda Shingen]

"Sigs that are political or religous in nature may only be displayed in General Topics. Only naval-oriented sigs are allowed in the naval and game forums."

My interpretation has been that a general statement is permissible while a specific statement is not. By that I mean the following.

Permissible:

Government is best which governs least - Henry David Thoreau

Not permissible:

Never vote Libertarian. They are destroying America.

In that aspect, your signature is fine. There are some, however, that need to reevaluate their sigs in that regard.

[TheDarkWraith]

do you not have the option to disable signatures? For some reason I think you can turn them off in your settings :hmmm:

[Brandmon]

Regarding size, I think it affects to those who have weaker computers and smaller resolutions which, while a minority these days, need to be considered. Rule of thumb in my opinion is that if a sig is longer than an averagely small post, it is too long. And if the sig is wider than the resolution of smaller monitors (yes, some still use 800x600 resolutions), then it is too wide. So I think the 220x640 limit for sigs is very reasonable and should be kept that way. Same for the size, especially regarding .gifs, since 10 of them at the same page could easily grind weaker PCs to a halt.

[Sailor Steve]

Fixed :doh:
Thanks, I didn't even notice I'd done that. :sunny:

[Oberon]

There have been a couple, but at the moment most seem to be within good limits...although to be fair, I have a 1920 x1080 screen resolution so it would have to be a VERY big picture to be a problem for me.
I couldn't honestly say what size my sig is, but in comparison with others I think it's about right.

[Spoon 11th]

5. I have disabled signatures years ago.

[nikimcbee]

Here's an idea, maybe you could buy the real estate for the bigger sig.

So, say for $100 donation to the subsimz, you could get this amount of space:

[mookiemookie]

There are some, however, that need to reevaluate their sigs in that regard.

I think I know exactly who you're referring to. :know:

[Sailor Steve]

I couldn't honestly say what size my sig is, but in comparison with others I think it's about right.
First picture is 225 x 150, and 32.599 KB. Second picture is 288 x 162 and 30.605 KB. Overall size is 513 x 162 and 63.204 KB.

[Sailor Steve]

So, say for $100 donation to the subsimz, you could get this amount of space:
So somebody pays $100, and I get to watch my computer slow to a crawl every time they post.

[Takeda Shingen]

So somebody pays $100, and I get to watch my computer slow to a crawl every time they post.

Agreed. Allowing people to buy out of the signature limits defeats the purpose of having signature limits.

[nikimcbee]

5. I have disabled signatures years ago.

See this if it causes that much of a problem.

[VipertheSniper]

@niki: Could you please take that gif down or host on a server that's not strapped for bandwidth? That image takes forever to load.

[nikimcbee]

@niki: Could you please take that gif down or host on a server that's not strapped for bandwidth? That image takes forever to load.

Done

[Oberon]

First picture is 225 x 150, and 32.599 KB. Second picture is 288 x 162 and 30.605 KB. Overall size is 513 x 162 and 63.204 KB.

Ah, so it's still within limits. Good stuff. Thanks Steve. :up:

[nikimcbee]

Ah, so it's still within limits. Good stuff. Thanks Steve. :up:

When you right click on the image and look at properties, it says the pixel and byte size. (just discovered it:/\\k:)

[kranz]

My interpretation has been that a general statement is permissible while a specific statement is not. By that I mean the following.

Not permissible:

Never vote Libertarian. They are destroying America.

In that aspect, your signature is fine. There are some, however, that need to reevaluate their sigs in that regard.

I vote for establishing a SubSim Signature Council TM that would decide which sigs are permissible and which are not.

Possible members of the Council: Skybird, Tribesman, Takeda (?)
Possible rules of proceeding: verdicts must be reached unanimously (:har:)

I remember that Xabbarus gave me infractions once for some socio-economic sentence. The only problem was that it was uttered by Hitler.
I agree that any offensive, inappropriate, abusive sigs should be removed but c'mon... :hmmm:

[Magic1111]

For me a Limit is okay, but I would prefer a Sig Limit Size 700x150!

[CherryHarbey]

Signatures that are a little bit too big are fine by me, those that are overly political are unnecessary.

[u crank]

I vote for establishing a SubSim Signature Council TM that would decide which sigs are permissible and which are not.

Possible members of the Council: Skybird, Tribesman, Takeda (?)
Possible rules of proceeding: verdicts must be reached unanimously (:har:

I'd pay a quarter to see that.:D

[nikimcbee]

I vote for establishing a SubSim Signature Council TM that would decide which sigs are permissible and which are not.

Possible members of the Council: Skybird, Tribesman, Takeda (?)
Possible rules of proceeding: verdicts must be reached unanimously (:har:)

I remember that Xabbarus gave me infractions once for some socio-economic sentence. The only problem was that it was uttered by Hitler.
I agree that any offensive, inappropriate, abusive sigs should be removed but c'mon... :hmmm:

Here's the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dVo3nbLYC0

[Skybird]

I have "two shoes that don't match"...? I assume that is an English proverb. But I do not know what it means, Neal. :hmmm: I never used pics, only coloured text. I never got any pics working in signatures. I change colour when I changed the text, which I do often: whenever I remembered or stumbled over a new - or new old - quote that I like.

On the issue, there should be size limits. Since it is about scrolling a thread, it mostly matters regarding vertical dimension, and thus I think a sig, may it be graphic or text, should not be thicker than 3-4 lines of text. Many, if not all forums I monitor, have limits much tighter handled than over here.

In the poll, option 4 my choice.

[Dowly]

Only the sigs that are waaaaaay over the size limit bother me.

[Takeda Shingen]

I vote for establishing a SubSim Signature Council TM that would decide which sigs are permissible and which are not.

Possible members of the Council: Skybird, Tribesman, Takeda (?)
Possible rules of proceeding: verdicts must be reached unanimously (:har:)

I remember that Xabbarus gave me infractions once for some socio-economic sentence. The only problem was that it was uttered by Hitler.
I agree that any offensive, inappropriate, abusive sigs should be removed but c'mon... :hmmm:

I think you should be on the council. You seem to have all the answers.

FYI, number of signature infractions given by Takeda: Zero.

[kranz]

I think you should be on the council. You seem to have all the answers.


Thank you. I'll do my best:salute:
(puts on Roland Freisler's hat)

[flostt]

I find it annoying if a signature occupies much more space than the actual mesage in the post.

If a single post covers half of your screen and I have to look for the message hidden somewhere above a large signature
(which might even contain animations), I tend to get so distracted that I don't really process what I'm reading.

[Subnuts]

I'm frankly more irritated by people who post uncompressed PNG screenshots. :/\\!!

[Dogfish40]

It's a part of Subsim that's part of it's personality. Besides, I might want to get a really really big one...er, ahem, I mean a large...no, skip it.:o

Ps: Keep the Sigs!
D40:O:

[magic452]

It's the animated Gif's that get to me the most, no matter how cleaver they are they soon become just annoying.

Magic

Got the card as well,It's on my calendar.

[CCIP]

I'm mostly on bad connections a lot, so... this affects me pretty directly. Not more than threads with exuberantly large screenshots, but at least for most of those, you kind of expect it when you click on a screenshot thread. Having everything constantly load and jump in every thread is a little annoying though :hmmm:

[rowi58]

Hi Neal.

keep these limits as they are. The real problem is THIS (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1924928&postcount=8). Dont allow direct embedding of videos, neither "You Tube" nor "others". That wolud be the end of smooth sailing in the subsim-forums.

Greetings
rowi58

[Dowly]

Hi Neal.

keep these limits as they are. The real problem is THIS (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1924928&postcount=8). Dont allow direct embedding of videos, neither "You Tube" nor "others". That wolud be the end of smooth sailing in the subsim-forums.

Greetings
rowi58

No it wouldn't. The video doesn't get loaded until the user presses the play button. :03:

[HunterICX]

No it wouldn't. The video doesn't get loaded until the user presses the play button. :03:

but the embedded player would still cause browsers to lag

HunterICX

[Friede Rösing]

well, i not affect the big signature.... but i only entry in a sHIII workshop :)

[divingbluefrog]

Hi friends,
I vote for the first option, but in fact it's a paradox.
The sigs are so big and so invasive that I turned them off for a long time now.
I only look for one time to time when I seek for a special link.
So, do what you want with the sigs, I never see them...

[Onkel Neal]

http://i.imgur.com/FgyUM.gif

Too big or under the limit?
@ Neal I got the postal-mailz from you.:up::rock: Thanks.

Hilarious, and it doesn't affect me, but at 1MB, it probably slows things down for a lot of people. Especially if 10 other people in the thread have similar gifs: 10MB+ on each page view :wah:

Yes, size does matter.

while some might go perhaps 20% over the allowed limits I'm fine with that but let's not have it going out of hand so that the forum lay out starts to get screwed or when I have to abuse my mouse scroll just to get to the next member's post.

I think the current dimensions are perfect.

as for filesize leave it 200 - 300kb top.
1 Mb Gif files are uncalled for at while they won't bother me at home on my own PC but at work on a not so state of the art pc it does bother me as big animated gif files just lag the browser and makes it a pain to navigate a thread.

HunterICX

Yeah, the vertical scroll does affect me. That's the reason for some kind of x pixels high limit, agreed.

I have "two shoes that don't match"...? I assume that is an English proverb. But I do not know what it means, Neal. :hmmm: I never used pics, only coloured text. I never got any pics working in signatures. I change colour when I changed the text, which I do often: whenever I remembered or stumbled over a new - or new old - quote that I like.

On the issue, there should be size limits. Since it is about scrolling a thread, it mostly matters regarding vertical dimension, and thus I think a sig, may it be graphic or text, should not be thicker than 3-4 lines of text. Many, if not all forums I monitor, have limits much tighter handled than over here.



Lol, no, it's no proverb. Often my announcements will include some random nonsense about one of the notable forum members. Last time it was Sailor Steve. :O: Again, I agree with you on the verticle dimension.



I find it annoying if a signature occupies much more space than the actual mesage in the post.

If a single post covers half of your screen and I have to look for the message hidden somewhere above a large signature
(which might even contain animations), I tend to get so distracted that I don't really process what I'm reading.

And regarding political sigs. 99.9% are fine, but that rule is in place for someone who abuses it, with hate speech or some Rush Limbaugh quotes.

One thing I want to stress: I personally do not want to be the sig police, and I am fine with letting things slide. But I do know that if we collectively go to extremes with sigs, it will really make reading threads a pain, so there has to be some limits, somewhere. I wanted to take the pulse and see how you felt about it.

[STEED]

I have to scroll left to right only because my zoom is set on 172% as I have no interest sitting to near my monitor screen which in the past has given me a headaches.

As for sigs in general I'm not that bothered about them unless they are over the top.

My Eagle sig is 15.6kb, 452x125 pixels Jpeg.

[Stiebler]

Neal's question reminds me of the old philosophical problem concerning litter:

If *I* drop litter, it will make no difference to the world. My contribution is too small.
If *everyone* drops litter, the world will be submerged in litter.

Therefore people in general cannot be allowed to drop litter.
Since I am part of 'people', I cannot be allowed to drop litter.

The same principle surely applies to large signatures:
If everyone is allowed to do it, SubSim will grind to a halt.
Since therefore everyone cannot be allowed to post large signatures, no one person can be allowed to do so either.

That is logical. I think. I have voted accordingly.

Stiebler.

[SilentOtto]

Nice people use only one or two text lines as a sig! :woot:

[TLAM Strike]

As long as they are not wider or taller than the screen its fine with me.

[Tchocky]

It's been years since I disabled signatures, I find the forums easier and more "natural" to read without them.

[Herr-Berbunch]

All those who disable sigs - you're missing out on so much*





*if you follow Dowly:arrgh!:

[aanker]

I have plenty of bandwidth and pages load fast - it is the people on slower connections especially any on dial-up I would be concerned about which is why I voted 'occasionally' - However, those on dial-up probably have graphics disabled so..........

Some are just too big as mentioned above - I don't like scroll bars unless it is important.

Happy Hunting!

[SilentOtto]

Today, the bigger problem is not bandwith (though it can be on many cases, rural areas, mobile connections with pay-per-data-volume), but screen real space. It's a real PITA to browse pages with a small screen, and even more if half the space is filled with sigs...

[Rockin Robbins]

Width, I don't see as too much of a problem, so long as it doesn't make people side scroll to see it all. It should all show on the same page. The present level 0f 640 is unnecessarily low, as it is a rare individual who is looking at Subsim with under 1024x768 resolution. You can see where I'm going: 900x220 makes sense.

HunterICX's signature is a perfect illustration why going to 900 is no worse than 640. The whole bottom line, blank space included, is taken by the signature anyway, isn't it?

So I suggest 900x220. That's full available width minus 10 or so and 220 high.

[RHR]

It matters not to me,all you have to do is scroll past it,not like you have to run 10k to get past it.I think if the forum has rules about the size follow it,if not then i guess its not that big of a prob.

[flatsixes]

Signatures only bother me if they contribute to global warming, like Dowly's.
Bothered, but not minding.

[Rilder]

The sigs sizes aren't to much of a problem for me, just keep them reasonable and I'm fine.

To bad the forums didn't have [Spoiler] tags, however, so people could have larger pixel wise sigs without making threads a pain to scroll through.

[CCIP]

Just for the record, too, I LIKE signatures. I think they're a cool thing and a great bit of creativity and design when people do them well. Those Torplexed-made sigs for example - pure gold! But I think efficiency and reasonable compactness are part of good design too.

[Sailor Steve]

I think if the forum has rules about the size follow it
So, why is yours bigger than the rules allow?

[Platapus]

I actually did not know you could turn off other people's signatures. I thought that option only affected my signature.

Just disabled the signatures and problem solved.

Giving the people a choice. :yeah:

[mookiemookie]

Neal's question reminds me of the old philosophical problem concerning litter:

If *I* drop litter, it will make no difference to the world. My contribution is too small.
If *everyone* drops litter, the world will be submerged in litter.

Therefore people in general cannot be allowed to drop litter.
Since I am part of 'people', I cannot be allowed to drop litter.

The same principle surely applies to large signatures:
If everyone is allowed to do it, SubSim will grind to a halt.
Since therefore everyone cannot be allowed to post large signatures, no one person can be allowed to do so either.

That is logical. I think. I have voted accordingly.

Stiebler.

No one raindrop feels responsible for the flood.

[nikimcbee]

Hilarious, and it doesn't affect me, but at 1MB, it probably slows things down for a lot of people. Especially if 10 other people in the thread have similar gifs: 10MB+ on each page view :wah:

I didn't realize the right click-properties showed all that info on the photo/gif:oops:. I just wish they picked a different unit of measurement than bytes:/\\!!. It's the 21st century, everything is in MB (or GB):doh:

[Cybermat47]

Regarding size, I think it affects to those who have weaker computers and smaller resolutions which, while a minority these days, need to be considered. Rule of thumb in my opinion is that if a sig is longer than an averagely small post, it is too long. And if the sig is wider than the resolution of smaller monitors (yes, some still use 800x600 resolutions), then it is too wide. So I think the 220x640 limit for sigs is very reasonable and should be kept that way. Same for the size, especially regarding .gifs, since 10 of them at the same page could easily grind weaker PCs to a halt.

Thanks for thinking of me!

[CaptainCruise]

The question I put to you: does size matter? :huh:



Loaded question, dude.......
:salute:

[CCIP]

:huh:



Loaded question, dude.......
:salute:

:haha: