Maybe this isn’t the place to post this. If not, could somebody please move it.
I want to vent a little:
It is not necessary to tell everybody what rifle you own and show us a picture of it every time you post. For the most part, we don’t care what you own or want to see a picture of it. Owning something does not mean you have knowledge, understanding or experience. It means you spent money on something.
I assume there are only two reasons you would want to do this:
You believe it gives you credibility. Owning a product gives you no credibility. Extensive use of a product, formal training, and armorer’s courses give you credibility. Not a spec sheet a picture in your signature line.
You are proud of your purchase. That is fine. Most people are proud of the things they’ve been able to acquire. They are sort of like children, classic cars, or whatever. That doesn’t mean we all want to see it with every single post you make. It is juvenile, takes of bandwidth, and makes it hard to follow a discussion thread when you post one little sentence at the top followed by 15 lines of specs and a photograph.
So for the good of the forum, why not keep signature lines to something short and sweet and minimize it to a few lines unless it is pertinent for understanding where you’re coming from—something like armorer courses or other credentials or even a short quote?
I don’t think we should have to though. Many, many sites on the internut have limitations on signature lines. IMHO 3-lines, two colors, and no pictures should be the max allowable.
I’ve heard the argument that some need to put their credentials there. For one, you can do that with your profile and for two (much like red hats for “instructors”) if you have to tell everyone who you are…
On the other hand, seeing people advertise their emotional problems with giant siglines can be helpful in vetting their posts.
:jester:
Another problem with collection list .sig lines is that they screw up the search engines for some forums. If you search for Model X, you end up getting every thread or post where the proud owner(s) of Model X listed it in their .sig line, whether or not there is any actual useful discussion of Model X in the thread.
I don’t find sig line length (within reason) to be nearly as distracting as people with all the colorful text. Moderators, IPs, etc., are particularly guilty of this one. However, neither of them bother me in the least.
I also don’t see what the issue is. I skimmed various posts after reading this, and a significant portion of the users here have sigs that are relatively short.
Could you offer an example of what you’re talking about?
However, neither of them bother me in the least.