Turn off signatures by default

[Jorge Castro]

Signatures make it hard to follow posts, especially when people use color.

Compare a UF thread to the clean readable lines of arstechnica's forum: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1121452

[Mike Basinger (mike.basinger)]

I like the flow without sig, but forum folk like to individualize their accounts.

[Matthew Helmke (matthelmke)]

We are in the process of creating a new forum theme that will appear when we upgrade our software to the latest major version (3.x to 4.x).

We will explore this. Eliminating the signatures entirely would be an abrupt change after 6 years of allowing them, and we don't want to cause an uproar. I know in earlier software versions we were able to have signatures only appear in a specific user's first post in a thread. Do you think that might be helpful as an intermediate solution?

[bodhi.zazen (bodhi.zazen)]

Although I do not have a strong opinion one way or another. I doubt we can have a setting that will make everyone happy, but you, as a user, can opt to show or hide sigs.

User CP -> Options -> visible Post Elements -> disable "show Signatures"

You may disable avatars and images also if you wish.

=)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jorge O. Castro" <email address hidden>
To: "bodhi zazen" <email address hidden>
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 11:05:33 AM
Subject: [Bug 637385] [NEW] Turn off signatures by default

Public bug reported:

Signatures make it hard to follow posts, especially when people use
color.

Compare a UF thread to the clean readable lines of arstechnica's forum:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1121452

** Affects: ubuntuforums.org
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

--
Turn off signatures by default
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/637385
You received this bug notification because you are a member of
ubuntuforums.org Staff, which is subscribed to Ubuntu Forums.

[bodhi.zazen (bodhi.zazen)]

Although I do not have a strong opinion one way or another. I doubt we can have a setting that will make everyone happy, but you, as a user, can opt to show or hide sigs.

User CP -> Options -> visible Post Elements -> disable "show Signatures"

You may disable avatars and images also if you wish.

=)

[KiwiNZ (xxxxxxxxxxx)]

I do not support the removal of signatures. This has been a Forum feature since the beginning and a much liked feature by the membership.I see no valid reason for its removal and there has been little complaints received about them.
Mike
KiwiNZAdministrator, Forum Council Member

> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:05:33 +0000
> From: <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Subject: [Bug 637385] [NEW] Turn off signatures by default
>
> Public bug reported:
>
> Signatures make it hard to follow posts, especially when people use
> color.
>
> Compare a UF thread to the clean readable lines of arstechnica's forum:
> http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1121452
>
> ** Affects: ubuntuforums.org
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
> --
> Turn off signatures by default
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/637385
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> ubuntuforums.org Staff, which is subscribed to Ubuntu Forums.

[aysiu (ubuntubugzilla-psychocats)]

With all due respect, KiwiNZ, I think the proposal is to have the setting be to not show signatures by default and to still allow signatures to be shown.

It is not to remove the ability to show signatures altogether.

[Elfy (elfy)]

There's already an option to turn it off - why set the default to suit one person?

If this was a real bug in ubuntu it would be set to Won't Fix or the person would be told it's not a bug.

[Jorge Castro (jorge)]

@forestpiskie I think you're confusing my what I am asking for. I know how to turn it off. What I am saying is that it should be off by default so people can read a conversation thread without having to read all the junk people post in their signatures. Is the goal to be able to participate in a discussion or making people trudge through people's system specs every post?

[Daniel Stone (danielstone)]

I agree with Jorge. I believe it would make the conversation easier to read.

Those who want to see the signature would simply just need to turn them on.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Perhaps a compromise would be to turn signatures off for people browsing the forums who are not logged in. This might also prevent signatures from appearing in search engine results. For users who are registered and logged in, signatures will show unless turned off in the User CP.

[Elfy (elfy)]

@jorge - no I'm not confused - I just don't particularly see sigs in a forum thread as very obtrusive - maybe that's because I've trained myself to only see the spam ones - then they disappear.

But to get back to the obtrusive or unobtrusive nature - to me a threaad on the forum with sigs that are in a very specific area of the post are much easier to read than some of the threads I have seen at the ubuntu stackexchange.

This one for example I find extremely hard to read - http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com/questions/3553/if-apt-get-from-2020-existed-what-one-project-would-you-install

Anyway - this is taking away from the 'bug' I guess.

I'm not likely to have any real influence on what happens with one of Canonical's fingers - but I do have a voice :)

[Jacob Peddicord (jpeddicord)]

Personally, I think Connor's solution sounds pretty reasonable: hide if signed out; respect user preference if signed in.

@forestpiskie: I took the time over the past week to give stackexchange a go. (Jorge convinced me at OLF. :P)
After a week using it, I can say that while it doesn't provide coherent discussions as the forums do, it is much more organized when it comes to asking and answering. While you say it may be hard to read, others may feel the same about the forums. I think both sites take a little bit of time to get accustomed to, and one site is bound to look foreign after using another. 2¢.

[Matthew Helmke (matthelmke)]

It is slightly off topic, but since it is being discussed, I think stack exchange and the forums serve and are likely to serve different populations. There will be some cross traffic at a certain level among some types of users, though. I don't see any reason one should feel threatened by the existence of the other or why either should feel superior to the other. They are each designed for different purposes.

Let's move back to the original topic: signatures by default or at all on the forums.

Again, we are working on a software upgrade. We can look in to the issue further once that is complete.

[Elfy (elfy)]

I've an account there myself and I dip in and out - but at the moment it's not really doing much for me.

But this is just going offtopic - I just don't see sigs as obtrusive, I rarely see them as they pass me by.

My point for originally commenting was based on the fact that I don't agree this is a bug.

It simply seems to be a change this I don't like it thing (and I don't mean that to be taken in any personal way Jorge) .

[Jorge Castro (jorge)]

"I'm not likely to have any real influence on what happens with one of Canonical's fingers - but I do have a voice :)"

My opinion (or influence on any decision anyone makes about the forums) has nothing to do with my being a Canonical employee, I just think it's a good idea so I filed a bug.

Also, a discussion is hard to read on Stack sites, that's on purpose, but way offtopic now. The reason I pointed to the arstechnica forum as an example is how clean it is to read the discussion without having to care what the person's favorite quote is or what their system specs are. I think there's value in having "Don't rm -fr!" sigs and all that, but the problem is that they get in the way of the discussion. Is there a way to move them to the left or something? Perhaps under the avatar?

[Matthew Helmke (matthelmke)]

I think we can look into whether or not they can be moved, but only after the software upgrade. Any changes we make now would be undone when that happens.

Let's table this until after we get the software upgrade completed.

[bodhi.zazen (bodhi.zazen)]

+1 to what forestpiskie said.

If one person does not like to see sig, he or she can turn them off.

It would open a huge can or worms if we go changing each and every forum default because of a single person. VB is very feature rich and there are many settings one could debate. There is not way we can please everyone and we would have these discussions (re: forms settings) endlessly.

IMHO we should not change the defaults unless there are problems with the settings or unless there are a majority of people who request such a change, and then only after discussion by the FC.

I have filed bug reports on LP and I agree something like this would be marked as "Won't Fix or the person would be told it's not a bug" in short order.

bodhi.zazen

----- Original Message -----
From: "forestpiskie" <email address hidden>
To: "bodhi zazen" <email address hidden>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 11:37:02 PM
Subject: [Bug 637385] Re: Turn off signatures by default

There's already an option to turn it off - why set the default to suit
one person?

If this was a real bug in ubuntu it would be set to Won't Fix or the
person would be told it's not a bug.

--
Turn off signatures by default
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/637385
You received this bug notification because you are a member of
ubuntuforums.org Staff, which is subscribed to Ubuntu Forums.

[aysiu (ubuntubugzilla-psychocats)]

"There's already an option to turn it off - why set the default to suit
one person?"

I don't see why you assume it's just one person. Is there a way the admins could query the vBulletin database to see how many folks have sigs turned off in their preferences? If it's more than 1/3, it's definitely worth looking into as a changed default (you don't need more than half, because a lot of folks will keep the default no matter what it is).

To use the same line of reasoning, there would already be an option to turn sigs on - why set the default to suit one person (who wants them on)?

[Mike Basinger (mike.basinger)]

Wow, I went to a LaunchPad bug, and ended up at a boxing match :).

I'm marking this bug invalid since Vb software 3.x or 4.x does not has this as an option. Individual can control this in the UserCP, but there is no way to make it the default without turning off sigs completely or do major editing of the forums templates.

[Matthew Helmke (matthelmke)]

Thanks for looking into the details, Mike.