Thread: Signature Size Restrictions - Your opinion?

Originally Posted by Aquanina

Who said anything about using a netbook? Christ stop making idiotic assumptions. I'm actually on a 17" powerbook, 1440x900 resolution, and some people's sigs DID take up half the fucking page, ok? I have screen shots, but I'm not going to waste my time posting them just for you. I'm honestly getting really sick of your complaining.

I never brought up netbooks. And if someone really was dumb enough to put a signature with a big enough picture and text, I'd love to see it, because I never saw one and DV seems like a place where people are smarter than that.

And what the hell? Overcompensating? And I'm the one making idiotic assumptions? I've already stated many times how, if given more hieght, you can have a much better picture. Just take Slash's sig for example (assuming he hasn't changed it). It was fucking awesome before the resize and now its the size of an avatar and you can't even tell what's going on.

People, take a moment, relax and listen to yourselves.

Why are you active on Dream Views in the first place? Are you here to learn or teach lucid dreaming? Are you here for the hot debates in the off topic forums? Are you here for the companionship and the sense of belonging?

Or are you here to show off how cool your signature is?

This is not health-care reform, it's not the war on AIDs, it's not the war on drugs....

It's just a signature!!

Well I'm here for all the reasons listed above. I didn't come here for showing off a sig, but that's one of the things I love about forums is that you can showcase your latest work in your sig. And does anyone else see the irony in the fact that almost none of the staff members posting have sig pics at all? In fact, that seems like a common theme in this thread. The people for it are the people it didn't affect. That seems rather dumb.

But you know what, screw it. If the wants of a few people is enough to make most everyone with a sig have to have it resized, then I'm just turning sigs off. No point. For all I know in a month there'll be a 300px wide limit. And it won't get changed back because "it's just a signature." so screw it. Sigs off.

Oh, and I love how you say you did this so people wouldn't have to turn sigs off, and yet a lot of people are just plain taking down their sig pics. Bet I'm leaving mine up. I may even load a high quality version. Suck it. Might as well make the most of this back-assward rule.

Oh, and you know the first thing I noticed after turning off sigs? There is a TON of blank space on EVERY post, with or without signatures. Lots of good this rule did.

Originally Posted by Xedan

But you know what, screw it. If the wants of a few people is enough to make most everyone with a sig have to have it resized, then I'm just turning sigs off. No point. For all I know in a month there'll be a 300px wide limit. And it won't get changed back because "it's just a signature." so screw it. Sigs off.

Dude, only 14 people could even be arsed to vote "no" on this poll. It's not like two people has the rest of the forum raging. Also, Staff won't change the rules in a while - at least not make them more restrictive. They will have discussed it thoroughly before implementing it, and they will recognize the inconvenience of these rules changing.

Thank you khh, yes, we discussed it at length; and we thought it would make DV more efficient and it did. I was going to say what Seeker said, be he said it. If you want to show off your art work, put it in the Artist forum where it belongs.

Originally Posted by Xedan

Well I'm here for all the reasons listed above. I didn't come here for showing off a sig, but that's one of the things I love about forums is that you can showcase your latest work in your sig. And does anyone else see the irony in the fact that almost none of the staff members posting have sig pics at all? In fact, that seems like a common theme in this thread. The people for it are the people it didn't affect. That seems rather dumb.

But you know what, screw it. If the wants of a few people is enough to make most everyone with a sig have to have it resized, then I'm just turning sigs off. No point. For all I know in a month there'll be a 300px wide limit. And it won't get changed back because "it's just a signature." so screw it. Sigs off.

Oh, and I love how you say you did this so people wouldn't have to turn sigs off, and yet a lot of people are just plain taking down their sig pics. Bet I'm leaving mine up. I may even load a high quality version. Suck it. Might as well make the most of this back-assward rule.

Jeez, chill, brah. Showing rage is one of the easiest ways to discredit yourself in a debate...it is, after all, just a signature. DV is still one of the most liberal forums I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of. Am I particularly fond of the new sig limits? No. Am I going to get worked up into a froth over them? Nah. Life's too short.

(That's right, I switched sides...)

I don't know how things have changed now, but what I do know is that the rule wherein there may be no more than seven lines of text - or some shit like that - is just bullshit.

Now, that wouldn't be such a bad restriction if that did not include the URL necessary to display your image, but it does; my current image URL takes up just barely 3 lines, I think, leaving only 4 left for my LD stats and my personal quote. Kinda harsh, isn't it? Considering how small my pic is in the first place?

Of course I'm against sig pics that would extend the scroll bar to ridiculous lengths (especially horizontally), but the line limit? That's some mixed up buffalo bullshit right there.

Well unless you're using a really small screen, I don't think they're going to extend it horizontally at 600px.

Originally Posted by Xedan

Oh, and I love how you say you did this so people wouldn't have to turn sigs off, and yet a lot of people are just plain taking down their sig pics. Bet I'm leaving mine up. I may even load a high quality version. Suck it. Might as well make the most of this back-assward rule.

Xedan, :/. There was a point behind what you were saying at first, now it seems to be clouded with misguided and childish insults. "Suck it"?

As for the seven line limit, if you can't fit it in, then contact an admin. It seems the only way some people know how to ask for things around here is to stamp and moan.

Can we either get somewhere or just drop this?

Well I don't see why I shouldn't use a high quality sig. First it shows how bad a job this new rule does of attacking the actual issue, and I get a sig that looks ever so slightly better.

And as to what you said about going somewhere, there's no where to go. Short of a reason like "150px sigs can cause blindness" it's obvious the staff isn't changing it. The opinions of those it affected wasn't taken into consideration (at least not directly) the first time, and the same opinions obviously aren't cared about now. You are using th double standard that you want rock hard reasons against the rule, but then when I get all worked up about it you say "it's just a sig." Yes, it is just a sig. And short of people having to scroll more than usual, you've yet to give anything other than opinion. And we can only give opinion back, because there's no way around the fact that we had to scroll. But did enough people really care about scrolling that much to make 150px a forced policy? And does anyone realize how minor a problem scrolling is? The only agreeable evidence you've given for the change is bandwidth, and as illustrated by my .png upload, the size restriction didn't attack the issue at all.

These are honestly the only arguments that can be made. So, if that's not enough for you, how can you expect this to go anywhere?

Seriously man, let it go. Yes, it's a pain to resize and upload sigs that were built to the old standard(I'll get around to it), but our sigs remain larger than the interweb average: a privilege that comes at Alex's expense. Being a dick when your epeen is threatened doesn't disprove the new policy's benefit to the forum.

There's no real way to argue against this.

Quality vs. Bandwidth.

Obviously bandwidth is going win unless someone can think of something else to restrict. Avatars are small enough already, so I dont' see that happening.

Not to mention that if less bandwidth is used, that it costs less for the owner to pay for it, then yeah, I can see why they would lower it.

I ended up voting no, and I would really like it if I didn't have to change my signature, but if this how it must be, then there is no point in argueing over it anymore.

I've already let it go. It obviously isn't changing. But that doesn't change the facts. The only thing that would come to Alex's expense is bandwidth. And the new policy doesn't solve that. In fact it makes it easier to have high quality, seeing as how at 200px a .png file would never have been below the limit. But with a smaller sig, I can get up to about 90kb on a .png file. And trust me, there are places WAY less strict about signatures. I'm not saying DV isn't loose on the topic, but it's not like we're the biggest place for sigs. On a forum I used to go to you could have up to three signature pics after one post and had three different sig sets to choose from on each post. And the only restriction was on file size. Now this was an art forum (more or less) and so the same cannot be expected of on DV, but if they want to lower bandwidth they need to lower the maximum file size. Otherwise nothing is solved other than helping a few people who can't stand scrolling.

In short, I don't care if the rule will never be changed. But as long as this thread is up I will continue to voice what I so believe is true.

It does reduce bandwidth, because the average user will not deliberately inflate the file size to be a dick.

Originally Posted by Xedan

The only agreeable evidence you've given for the change is bandwidth, and as illustrated by my .png upload, the size restriction didn't attack the issue at all.

You haven't got a PNG sig, you've got a GIF one.
Edit: no, you've actually got a png one. Why did you change the extention to gif, then?
reedit: Hah, seems the server automatically saves pics with a .gif extension regardless of what they originally are... how stupid.

No, but people will certainly get as high quality as they can. It's just that with smaller sig you can easily get right up against the limit without going over. I don't know why anyone would go for a 20kb .JPEG when they can just as easily have a 80kb png.

Originally Posted by khh

You haven't got a PNG sig, you've got a GIF one.
Edit: no, you've actually got a png one. Why did you change the extention to gif, then?

I think all sig are converted to .gif on this site. Because I know I uploaded it as a .png, and I tried saving it and it went to .gif.

Edit: wasn't in before your edit. Does my post answer your question?

Originally Posted by Xedan

I think all sig are converted to .gif on this site. Because I know I uploaded it as a .png, and I tried saving it and it went to .gif.

Edit: wasn't in before your edit. Does my post answer your question?

Yeah, all pictures are apparently saved with a .gif extension. The data isn't converted, though.

Your sig is ugly anyway.

Well that's rude I'm about to upload a new one anyways. The one I have now took about five minutes to make, and only because I had to render the girl out of the old background.

By the way, is there any intermediate quality file between png and jpeg? I'm not trying to be a dick, but I do want the picture in as good of quality at I can get. As a png it is .4kb too large.

Originally Posted by Xedan

No, but people will certainly get as high quality as they can. It's just that with smaller sig you can easily get right up against the limit without going over. I don't know why anyone would go for a 20kb .JPEG when they can just as easily have a 80kb png.

Well, no. I generally go for the smallest file size that looks good. Why would you subject everyone to loading a file 4x larger than necessary for a likely unnoticeable quality gain?

Well I don't see why anyone would go lower in quality than they have to.

Originally Posted by ClouD

Xedan, :/. There was a point behind what you were saying at first, now it seems to be clouded with misguided and childish insults. "Suck it"?

As for the seven line limit, if you can't fit it in, then contact an admin. It seems the only way some people know how to ask for things around here is to stamp and moan.

Can we either get somewhere or just drop this?

+1

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Seriously man, let it go. Yes, it's a pain to resize and upload sigs that were built to the old standard(I'll get around to it), but our sigs remain larger than the interweb average: a privilege that comes at Alex's expense. Being a dick when your epeen is threatened doesn't disprove the new policy's benefit to the forum.

+1

Originally Posted by slayer

There's no real way to argue against this.

Quality vs. Bandwidth.

Obviously bandwidth is going win unless someone can think of something else to restrict. Avatars are small enough already, so I dont' see that happening.

Not to mention that if less bandwidth is used, that it costs less for the owner to pay for it, then yeah, I can see why they would lower it.

I ended up voting no, and I would really like it if I didn't have to change my signature, but if this how it must be, then there is no point in argueing over it anymore.

+1

Originally Posted by Taosaur

It does reduce bandwidth, because the average user will not deliberately inflate the file size to be a dick.

+1

Originally Posted by Xedan

No, but people will certainly get as high quality as they can. It's just that with smaller sig you can easily get right up against the limit without going over. I don't know why anyone would go for a 20kb .JPEG when they can just as easily have a 80kb png.

I don't...I'm perfectly happy with my jpg. I think it looks fine in terms of quality...whether or not someone agrees with the theme or not is another matter, but quality-wise, it's just fine. I saved a second copy as a png file, too, and I gotta say...whilst flipping between the two, I saw no difference at all.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Well, no. I generally go for the smallest file size that looks good. Why would you subject everyone to loading a file 4x larger than necessary for a likely unnoticeable quality gain?

+1 It's just too much work, and counter-productive. If Alex didn't have to pay so much for bandwidth, then perhaps he could put that money to better use by improving the forum in some way (how, I have no idea).

Originally Posted by Xedan

Well I don't see why anyone would go lower in quality than they have to.

Because it's too damn much work.

Wait, not reducing size is too much work?

And stop awesoming everything! It makes you seem so smug!

Improving quality is too damn much work. Seriously? I have most of my pictures stored as jpegs, simply because they take up less memory and are easier to work with (just about every program recognizes a jpg image). With my current sig, I just cropped, added a basic border, and saved the file. Guess what? It was already in jpeg format. Besides that, a png file would have been far too big. So yeah, definitely in my case, trying to improve quality is a pain in the ass.