Signature Suggestion

[Aglarthalion]

After reading Beorn's post (http://www.thetolkienforum.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=286475#post286475) in a recent thread in this forum, explaining the avatar restrictions are in place to save disk space (and bandwidth too, I presume), I had an idea which would further help to keep disk space and to reduce bandwidth somewhat of the forum.

At another forum I frequent (also powered by vBulletin), the forum is set so that signatures are turned off by default for posts (when making a post, members must manually check the box to include their signature). It is also stated in the rules of that forum that signatures are only to be used by the poster once per thread, so if a member posts multiple times in one thread, their signature is used only once (usually on their first post in the thread).

These measures help greatly to ensure that the usage of signatures is cut down, which in turn helps to save disk space and reduce bandwidth. I mention this suggestion because I read Beorn's post regarding the need of saving disk space, and also because I get somewhat tired of seeing so many signatures when I read threads, particularly when it is the same signature repeated multiple times. ;)

Aglarthalion Ainagil

[Beorn]

That's a good idea, but a signature is rarely longer than 1000 characters, while an avatar can go up to 20,480. So, in a thread with 50 posts and 10 people, disabling the signature will save maybe 40k characters. Saying that maybe 6 out of 10 participants (which is a large number) have an avatar, whereas the other 4 aren't allowed to yet. That saves 40*20480 or 819.2k characters....And bandwidth is basically all about how many characters you squeeze through...

[Aulë]

Aglarthalion, you're idea would probably be more effective on a forum where images are allowed in the signature.

[YayGollum]

People have changed the rules with signatures again. They's supposed to be only five lines long now, right? I'm still seeing people not paying attention to that. Two people in this thread already. oh well. Looks like this Beorn person replied pretty well. I couldn't have.

[Aulë]

What are you talking about YayG?
Mine and Beorn's signatures are 5 lines long.

[YayGollum]

Well, not on my computer. I've run into people telling me that it looks different on different computers. What happens when some moderator with a computer like mine tells someone to fix the thing? Another moderator with a computer like yours wouldn't have a problem with it. oh well. I'm probably just an evil person. *runs away*