Whats wrong with sigs?

[Gargen]

i have noticed that many of you are agianst allowing signatures in your forums, personally i have a site that has a large GFX section so really allowing sigs is a big part of my site, I have seen many forums that have Threads: 15,038, Posts: 701,934, Members: 10,395, and the Gentoo forums Our users have posted a total of 2622721 articles
We have 93411 registered users and they allow sigs i just dont see it as being a bad thing if you limit them to 150px

[rogerd]

People don't like sigs for different reasons:
- take up space and bandwidth with no new content
- break up the flow of reading threads
- may be promotional for competing sites, etc.

The main reason here at WebmasterWorld is that we have strict self-promotion policies, and sigs tend to be self promos. Not all forums deny members the ability to self-promote, of course.

Ultimately, it's a forum-by-forum decision.

[Webwork]

Have you ever heard of "banner blindness"?

It's caused by repetitive exposure to noxious, promotional stimuli.

[philbish]

I have them turned off for guest views, and I give the registered users the option of turning them off/on.

I think it is better to have them off.

[Casethejoint]

All the above, and there may be additional modding problems too. In some BB platforms that generate static pages the text in sigs cannot be edited by mods - only option is to delete the entire post. A minor irritant, but nevertheless...

[invalidusername]

I feel like a nobody without my avatar and signature! :(

[benihana]

I feel like a nobody without my avatar and signature!

Stick around and keep posting, you wont even notice its not there after a bit :)

[bradley phil]

break up the flow of reading threads

this is actually a much bigger factor than people tend to think - big sigs really dilute the content of a page. You want a reader to keep reading and stay hooked til the bottom - it's not just kids that have a short attention span! a thread reader will be more involved in a thread if there aren't loads of sigs breaking up the flow - and if he's more involved, he's more likely to post. And that reply will more likely be a longer, more thought-provoking response, and not a lazy oneliner

[martinibuster]

Some forums are free for alls and it works for them. Good for them.

I personally dislike sigs as it encourages worthless, "Hi, I'm new here! Great forum!" posts, with the sig... and you never see them again.

That kind of post adds nothing to the forum.

Allowing these people to spam my forum might increase my post count, thread count, and membership numbers, I feel it doesn't make my forum a better community.