Rules Regarding Signatures and Such

[Tornado]

A few months ago, a member here made a really nicely optimized set of a animated GIFs from Sonic Lost World. They certainly did a great job conveying the bright and fun art style of the game, and it's clear many members are at what would previously be considered an unheard of level of optimism and happiness about the new game (no doubt in part to seeing those GIFs).



So, many people have been putting them in their signatures to show their appreciation of the game so far.
 

 

 

Some people show their appreciation so much that they try to put as many of them in as possible.
 

I repeat:

DO NOT PUT THOSE GIFS IN YOUR SIGNATURES.


Remember, the signature rules are 400kb total for all images, and as close to 600x300 as possible. Not 2 or 3 4000 kb animated gifs stacked on top of each other making your signature longer than most of your posts. I've been willing to let a lot of signatures approaching 1MB slide so long as they aren't too obnoxious (or more usually, because I find them funny or whatever). I've even had a couple myself that were just over the 400kb limit. And I'd hate to have to start getting a lot more strict on it because people refuse to keep their signatures under control. I've already stopped PMing people to let them fix the signatures themselves, and are editing them directly.

It's incredibly annoying to have a page fail to load properly because the several multiple megabyte images in signatures hosted on several different places take so long that it times out. And that's even though my internet looks like this:


 

I can't imagine how it is for others. So please, SSMBers. Consider your fellow members when constructing your signatures. We give you the leeway rather than outright blocking the usage of images above a certain size for a reason. Don't make us take that away.

[Autosaver]

Just a note too, you can disable signatures (which I have done) if you feel peoples' signatures are slowing down your browsing. It will also prevent possible spoilers (as I know a ton of people are avoiding them). People have been getting ridiculous with their signatures so it left me with disabling all of them. This is why we can't have nice things.

 

Hopefully more people will pay attention to the signature limit.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Autosaver

[Chaos Warp]

Does it matter if you spoiler the Gifs or not? I heard that fixed the whole page refusing to load thing (as long as you don't open all the spoilers at once), but I could be grossly misinformed so if I am I apologize. 

 

Also, people, if you wanna show some SLW love with those awesome GIF's, use your About Me on your profile like I'm using. That doesn't have a limit on it. 

Edited September 26, 2013 by Chaos Warp

[Frogging101]

Does it matter if you spoiler the Gifs or not? I heard that fixed the whole page refusing to load thing (as long as you don't open all the spoilers at once), but I could be grossly misinformed so if I am I apologize.

Also, people, if you wanna show some SLW love with those awesome GIF's, use your About Me on your profile like I'm using. That doesn't have a limit on it.

I asked bmn about this a while ago his answer is directly below my post. Apparently it depends on the browser's handling of a CSS tag. In most major browsers, spoiler tagging the images will unfortunately not prevent them from being loaded with the page.

[TailsTellsTales]

What if there was signature approval where when 3 to 5 days go by in case they need to change it lot they would get approval, suggestion, and warning?

[Tara]

What if there was signature approval where when 3 to 5 days go by in case they need to change it lot they would get approval, suggestion, and warning?

I don't know if that's possible with this software, but I imagine it would be more of a burden than anything.  Especially since there are members who use their signatures to advertise their most recent works.

 

I wouldn't mind too much if we installed something that either automatically condensed images in signatures or prevented you from updating once you reached a certain limit.  I know that's possible on some forum software, but I'm not sure about the latest version of IPB.  Though I imagine that imposing such a feature would probably go against Tornado's message of "we give lenience for a reason," which is for the greater good, really.

[Tani Coyote]

It is generally the newer blood who will break little rules like this, so if one wanted a "quality control," simply making it so one needs 50 or so posts before you can even have a signature is pretty good for achieving that.

In the case of the oversized GIFs issue, though, I don't think it was newer members forming that issue. In that case it really should be just a simple "Be considerate with what you use as for your signature or else" ruling, I'd think - the same idea that governs how we post. Our posts aren't screened prior to their being published, after all, but we do face repercussions if we aren't careful with what we put in them.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Ogil.exe Maurice

[Willsy]

Sorry to bump the thread, but I was wondering if the gif I have in my signature currently (if you're a member reading this in 2000 years time, nevermind) is okay to use? If it is, I personally found it a bit large even though it fits the sizing rules, so I spoilered it so people can chose whether they want to see it or not.

[Tara]

If it fits within the limits outlined in the rules, it's fine.  Just don't add like several more on top or below it or anything. ^.^ <3

[Willsy]

Ah okay then, thanks.

[Chris]

Sorry to bump the thread, but I was wondering if the gif I have in my signature currently (if you're a member reading this in 2000 years time, nevermind) is okay to use? If it is, I personally found it a bit large even though it fits the sizing rules, so I spoilered it so people can chose whether they want to see it or not.

The problem isn't the resolution (well, outside of GIF compression methods) so much as it is the size. If a GIF is near or over 1MB it can cause issues for users on slower connections or service providers which still maintain monthly data caps (most do - biggest offenders being cellphone providers).

 

While your image is fine and I appreciate how considerate you're being with putting it behind spoiler tags, any content within the spoilers is loaded per page even without touching the button. These tags do not circumvent load times.

 

Edit: That said, I feel that the rules regarding signatures could use some amendments in the near future.

[tvn88pl]

Whatever is thread about Sonic Master System Generations Project it's still plagiarism?

[Nepenthe]

Whatever is thread about Sonic Master System Generations Project it's still plagiarism?