• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Wha?! Max size of signiture 255 characters!

Status
Not open for further replies.

macgeek417

Well-known member
I just noticed that the max size changed from 500 chars to 255 chars. Why? (That'd be unconvienient if i go to edit it as my sig has exactly 500chars in it!)

What was wrong with 500chars?

 

Mars478

Well-known member
Yeah, it's a change that came with PHPBB3.5 (or whatever it is.)

I had to redo my Sig.

 

~tl

68kMLA Admin Emeritus
Must have changed with the 3.0.6 update. However, 255 characters seems more than enough to me. Not sure why it was ever 500. Anyway, not my place to change it now [:eek:)] ]'>

 

John8520

Well-known member
Well, you could always shorten it - I think a lot of us would appreciate that..

You could also get rid of that freakin' spinning avatar....

 

MrMacPlus

Well-known member
Yeah, I don't like this new limit, my sig is about 270 characters and it's already quite compact, what happens when I want to add a machine to the list? :disapprove:

 

porter

Well-known member
Yeah, I don't like this new limit, my sig is about 270 characters and it's already quite compact, what happens when I want to add a machine to the list? :disapprove:
You have to sell some of the others?

 

macgeek417

Well-known member
Yeah, 255chars is ridiculous. @Admins: could you please change it back to what it was? pretty please?

:p

And I don't see why some of you don't like my spinny avatar... it took me 3 hours to make it!

 

macgeek417

Well-known member
Oh, would you prefer this as my avatar?

0f102a0896.png


}:)

 

Anonymous Freak

Well-known member
What was wrong with 500chars?
The fact that your signature is quite often longer (in some cases significantly longer, such as every post of yours in this thread) than your posts.

Some people are still using dial-up; and some others (such as myself) just like threads that don't have half of their page height taken up with signatures.

In general, four lines is considered to be the maximum 'polite' length for a signature. Yes, with modern wide-screen displays and small fonts, it can be easily possible to exceed 255 characters (and possibly even 500,) while staying within 4 lines (see MrMacPlus.) That said, having a fixed character limit can help to encourage shorter signatures. (And, obviously, it is possible to have a 255-line signature in 255 characters; not counting blank lines!)

Your signature is 16 lines long. Five lines detailing your machines (which could easily be placed in one potentially line-wrapping line,) one line detailing the fact that you have liberated one single 68k Mac, six lines dedicated to 'cruft', and four blank lines.

Yes, the bunny was funny the first two or three times I saw it. It's not any more. Yes, the quotes are each semi-funny. Pick one.

You could quite easily be down to 255 characters; and/or 4 lines, and avoid annoying people in the process. A quick search of your posts reveals that in the latest three pages of your posts, you have only *ONE* post with more lines of original writing of your own than your signature takes up. And it has 17 lines to your signature's 16. (In fact, if you hadn't used a double-line break in that message, it would be equal to your signature in lines.)

I am not saying that your contributions to this forum are unwelcome; not at all. I am merely pointing out that your signature is a cause for annoyance.

(Yes, I've been too lazy to make a signature on here. I suppose I'll go copy my .sig from either MacRumors or The Vintage Computer Forums...)

 

~tl

68kMLA Admin Emeritus
But my sig is in small text. compare. This to this!

Mi sig is ~11 lines of *normal* text.

:)
So? I spend a significant amount of time browsing on a netbook. Your signature takes up HALF my screen. Seriously, don't you think that's too long? Although it's no longer really my place to enforce it, I bring your attention to The Rules on this matter:

Signatures…For the benefit of other members of the forum, especially those on small screens, please try to keep your signatures short. Having more than three or four lines is probably too much. If you really want to have a complete list of every machine you own, then your user page on the 68kMLA Wiki is probably a better place to do it. You can link to your user page using the [ wiki][/wiki] BBCode tags – see this forum topic for more information. Other URLs, images and smilies are disabled in signatures.
So, the moral of the story is keep it to three or four lines max. Please, for the sake of everyone else. Add your list of machines to a Wiki user page and make a link to that, if you really must.

Oh, would you prefer this as my avatar?
0f102a0896.png


}:)
No. We really wouldn't. Again, to quote the rules:

Avatars…We allow you to choose a small graphic to use as an avatar. However, we reserve the right to remove any image that we deem inappropriate without notice. Although animated GIFs are allowed, we discourage you from using them since they can be distracting.
Please don't use animated GIFs. It's a guaranteed way to piss everybody else off.

 

Mars478

Well-known member
I don't see the apple spinning! Is that something safari does? I am sorry for the off topicness.

On Topic, is my signature OK?

 

LCGuy

LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
Oh, would you prefer this as my avatar?
0f102a0896.png


}:)
No. We really wouldn't. Again, to quote the rules:

Avatars…We allow you to choose a small graphic to use as an avatar. However, we reserve the right to remove any image that we deem inappropriate without notice. Although animated GIFs are allowed, we discourage you from using them since they can be distracting.
Please don't use animated GIFs. It's a guaranteed way to piss everybody else off.
There's also the fact that a bright flashing avatar such as that one could be potentially hazardous to someone suffering from epilepsy or a similar disorder...while I don't think we currently have any members in that position, its certainly something to think about...

Anyway, I'd like to second Tom's recommendation to shorten your signature and think about putting your list of machines on the wiki. Really...I think by now we all know how many of what Macs you have and all, and those who don't...well, they should know where to go (the wiki) to find out.

Mars478: His avatar is an animated PNG - a format which is only supported by Firefox and maybe a couple of other browsers. Just, guys...please, just don't use animated avatars of any kind.

 

Mars478

Well-known member
You can do that to the Wiki? Have other's done so? I used to have my Mars478.Mine.nu website with all my macs, but links got disabled and I was nuked. I just shorted down my sig by removing spaces as you can see by it's current rev.

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
You can link to the wiki by putting a link inside wiki tags.

[wiki]User:Cory5412[/wiki]

I agree with the sentiment that the longest signatures and most animated avatars are not only completely unnecessary, but I'd go as far as to say extremely annoying. I'm on a 20-inch iMac right now, and this is the biggest of the computer displays I use throughout the day, and if I maximise the height of the browser on this machine, signatures can still account for approximately half of the display space.

To put it simply, what I've noticed is that signatures tend to be filled with information that, for all intents and purposes, we don't need to read underneath every single post, so I'm going to go ahead and recommend that everybody puts their machine list and quotes list on the wiki, where you can create a page that's thousands of characters long, detailing history and everything for each machine. Heck, the wiki lets you create subpages [wiki]User:Cory5412/machines/Schlangenbeschwoerer[/wiki] like this one about my old iMac.

 

~tl

68kMLA Admin Emeritus
You can do that to the Wiki? Have other's done so? I used to have my Mars478.Mine.nu website with all my macs, but links got disabled and I was nuked. I just shorted down my sig by removing spaces as you can see by it's current rev.
Yeah, of course. The only stipulation is we would ask that you keep personal content to your user page and sub-pages thereof. Aside from that, you can put anything up you want.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top