Author Topic: New Restrictions on Signatures (Read 776 times)

Matthew · « **on:** July 20, 2016, 12:58:12 AM »

I put in place some restrictions on "signature lines", those blocks of text found beneath each one of your posts (for those that have set one).

Some people don't have a sig line at all, while others have quite a long one. And they appear after every post, so it can add up to quite a bit of scrolling.

I'm sure some people say to themselves, "I get the idea already!" and are sick of looking at them.

To prevent an "arms race" of signatures, the best solution is to put a few restrictions on them for EVERYBODY:

1. They will be limited to a certain length: 500 characters.
A few members liked to put every argument for their pet issue in their sig line. Well, from now on you'll have to be more selective! Pick your favorite.
2. They will be plain, black text of normal size. This makes them smaller and easier to ignore.
3. No website links are allowed (but this isn't a change)

Matthew · « **Reply #1 on:** July 20, 2016, 01:03:01 AM »

P.S. Some of you will have to fix your signatures because of something I did. Sorry about that!

I changed the signature to be 255 characters max (the largest for a VARCHAR) but apparently that isn't enough. It sounds like a lot, but it isn't. At that point, everyone's sig was chopped to 255 characters.

My final solution was to make it an unlimited TEXT field again, but to truncate it manually in the program itself (before it gets displayed anywhere). That way I can truncate it to any number of characters I want -- in this case, 500.

The only upside is that you probably want to edit your signature at this point anyhow -- with these new restrictions in place, you might want to re-consider how you want to spend your 500 characters.

Pax Vobis · « **Reply #2 on:** July 20, 2016, 08:59:20 AM »

This is a great change. Signatures can get out of control and waste space.

Marlelar · « **Reply #3 on:** July 22, 2016, 12:38:12 PM »

Thank you! Some of them are more like essays than signatures :)