# Zijn handtekeningen na berichten echt iets van het verleden?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379
**Category:** Community Building
**Tags:** signatures
**Created:** [30 april 2024 om 04:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379 "2024-04-30T04:52:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@xuhdev](https://meta.discourse.org/u/xuhdev)
#### Post date: [30 april 2024 om 04:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/1 "2024-04-30T04:52:06Z")
Not a troll question, a genuine question:
> [@Discourse Signatures](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-signatures/42263/1):
>
> We all know forum signatures are [a relic of the past](https://meta.discourse.org/t/plugin-for-signatures/32906)…
Do you have a reference? This is pretty new to me 🙂
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### Author:  [@Bas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Bas)
#### Post date: [14 mei 2024 om 11:59 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/2 "2024-05-14T11:59:33Z")
Discourse has taken a pretty strong “signatures don’t belong in core” since its foundation, see for example this post from 2013.
> [@Automated Signatures?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127):
>
> @codinghorror has already PM’d me that THIS implementation of Discourse discourages manual signatures. But what about automated signatures, like we see on other forums? (the forum software draws a horizontal line below the post and prints the custom signature) Some folks don’t like them and in the userCP, they can be turned off. Here? I can’t find the option anywhere at all. Is it on the cards or only through plugins?
Now of course, the beauty of the software is that it’s fully customizable, so if you _really_ want signatures, there is an official plugin for it 🙂
> [@Discourse Signatures](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-signatures/42263):
>
> discourse2Summary Discourse Signatures adds old school forum signatures to Discourse.hammer_and_wrenchRepository Link [https://github.com/discourse/discourse-signatures](https://github.com/discourse/discourse-signatures)open_bookInstall Guide [How to install plugins in Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-plugins-in-discourse/19157) We all know forum signatures are [a relic of the past](https://meta.discourse.org/t/plugin-for-signatures/32906), but there are still a lot of communities that really love them. Since Discourse is rainbow I crafted a plugin that lets us take back our much loved (gif animated) signatures!
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [14 mei 2024 om 12:22 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/3 "2024-05-14T12:22:52Z")
Yes. You only have to click on an avatar to get more User information and don’t have to suffer scrolling and scrolling lots of information irrelevant to the current Topic.
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### Author:  [@piffy](https://meta.discourse.org/u/piffy)
#### Post date: [14 mei 2024 om 14:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/4 "2024-05-14T14:26:40Z")
Signatures are definitely a relic of the past. The rise of mobile makes screen real estate a lot more value so it’s unwieldy to let people arbitrarily fill up most of the space with junk.
However, what’s lost when signatures are gone is the ability to express yourself or your personality outside of your avatar and username.
So on my forum we tried to strike a balance by allowing users to choose from a set of small predetermined spirites. It minimizes space used while still giving people another way to express themselves.
Gone are open-ended signatures but we don’t have to throw out the full baby with the bathwater.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 03:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/7 "2024-08-18T03:54:01Z")
Might make me old. 😂
But signatures have been. Used since the days of dial up ANSI/ASCII graphics BBSes most ran in DOS but there was also C=64 and Amiga Running BBSes.
Depending on the Bulletin Board people might use an Offline Mail reader .
A lot of BBS software was a hack/fork of Telegard. The most commonly used one was “Renegade BBS”
> **[The Renegade BBS Project](https://renegade.sourceforge.net/index.html)**
> **[Renegade (BBS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renegade_(BBS))**
>
> Renegade is a freeware bulletin board system (BBS) written for IBM PC-compatible computers running MS-DOS that gained popularity among hobbyist BBSes in the early to mid 1990s. It was originally written by Cott Lang in Turbo Pascal, optimized with assembly language, based on the source code of Telegard, which was in turn based on the earlier WWIV.
> On April 23, 1997, after the decline of BBS popularity, Lang ceased development work on Renegade and passed it on to two Renegade BBS utility authors:...
Back in those days I got into Hex editing the OVR file inserting MCI codes to further customize the interface.
With an auto signature &/or a tagline.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 07:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/8 "2024-08-18T07:30:31Z")
But do you remember too how siganatures stopped to be fun after one passes teenages and those were just annoying because repetition after repetition. Like hearing same ancient joke dozen time a day 😏
And then came companies and posts were more ads than content. Actually I would say signatures were like pre-historical google ads.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 07:59 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/9 "2024-08-18T07:59:25Z")
It really depended on how big the signature was.
Taglines was a 1 liner
Where I was back then a signature was typically at most 4 lines that formed an ASCII pic.
But agreed some ppl would at times create ridiculously huge ones.
I do recall many pcgamung forums and similar usually had their PC setup posted(basics cpu/ram/GPU & maybe Hard drive)
As some have recently requested an option to be able to restrict signatures to certain groups does make sense to keep things more reasonable.
A company I volunteer admin for. The signature is used to display a couple support links & such. So nothing too crazy. The company I volunteer for is quite decent with not flooding adds in their forum. However they are still working in their support process as it is not consistent user XP.
A lot comes down to cultural norms & community maturity ,group(s) level of maturity. Both are subjective as it will vary from one culture to another. Ie the folks looking to make posts empty if content. While I understand the request’s purpose is more of a cultural thing. It is not something I myself would use.
However sometimes I do just want to create a post with quoted content for a discussion topic that is kept cleaner by only having announcement posts. Having to enter 20 chars can be quite annoying (yes I know I can lower this default). 😉
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### Author:  [@schneeland](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schneeland)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 11:14 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/10 "2024-08-18T11:14:20Z")
> [@Heliosurge](#):
>
> I do recall many pcgamung forums and similar usually had their PC setup posted(basics cpu/ram/GPU & maybe Hard drive)
Yes, that’s still a common thing (at least in the forums I visit). And in a way it’s nice to sometimes have a look at what other people are using. But then the question is: how often do I really consciously look at that? And for me, that’s definitely rare.
So I feel Discourse has made the right call to go with a more minimalist post layout and push user text (as well as most statistics) to the user profile/info card.
That being said: if we do really move the forum where I’m an admin to Discourse, I’m pretty sure some people will miss them, at least initially, if only because they have been around for so long.
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### Author:  [@ccd2s](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ccd2s)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 11:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/11 "2024-08-18T11:37:38Z")
Maybe it is possible to change the signatures to VIP user exclusive?
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 12:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/12 "2024-08-18T12:38:24Z")
> [@schneeland](#):
>
> Yes, that’s still a common thing (at least in the forums I visit). And in a way it’s nice to sometimes have a look at what other people are using. But then the question is: how often do I really consciously look at that? And for me, that’s definitely rare.
The core benefit I see with a gaming community having a system specs in the “Signature” can be beneficial for ppl with support questions. I know with admining a couple of VR Communities when a person is having problems with a game/device. Quite often need to request them to post these details.
That being said you can install signatures and keep it pretty clean with Hide Details. Or even add a toggle say in the sidebar, header to turn on/off visibility. Or something completely different. Like a computer icon in posts near the poster’s avatar that can be clicked to pull up a pop up window. The flexibility is very wide for what you can do
Though if using the solved plugin with one of the various template options you can have these queries in a help topic for example.
Now having signatures have more options added at some point like group & category control options would be very welcome.
With Discourse you can have simple minimal to crazy complex with just about every feature one could think a forum could have.
* * *
Something truly archiac though imho is the string threads that Reddit uses to connect comments. I am not fond of. That has been around since Dial up BBS.
Discourse has added a much better feature with being able to focus on a comment where it hides the rest of the topic posts except those tied to a specific post.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 12:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/13 "2024-08-18T12:51:08Z")
Not at this time. Signatures has minimal settings.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 14:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/14 "2024-08-18T14:00:54Z")
> [@Heliosurge](#):
>
> Like a computer icon in posts near the poster’s avatar
And then it would give light version of info that can be told using avatar. I don’t get the point of it or similar solutions.
> [@Heliosurge](#):
>
> That has been around since Dial up BBS
And yet it is practically extinct 😏
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### Author:  [@Architect](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Architect)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 14:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/15 "2024-08-18T14:24:19Z")
> [@Jagster](#):
>
> Like hearing same ancient joke dozen time a day 😏
That can be really annoying when people have a weird quote or saying in a signature that is more lines of text than most of the posts they write is especially bad.
Seems reasonable to have a one line signature option with the official plug-in can be good if people are writing many paragraph long posts can start to loose track of who the author is if there isn’t a signature at the end.
While the profile picture at the top left travels down with post and clicking that to link to user profile kind of acts like signature, that can also be annoying.
Perhaps good feature request would be to have link to user profile posted at the end of posts, suppose that can be done with the signature option somehow? That could be done manually by users, but may be better for it to be automatic that all signatures are just a link to the user card so there isn’t risk of people writing in confusing parables in that.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 16:13 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/17 "2024-08-18T16:13:22Z")
I could live with oneliners, if system would force to use several ones, that would come randomly.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 17:14 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/18 "2024-08-18T17:14:25Z")
> [@Jagster](#):
>
> And then it would give light version of info that can be told using avatar. I don’t get the point of it or similar solutions
Unlike a signature a user would have to choose to open the icon. In tech & gaming support this saves time asking a member to post the info. Now if you’re not into gaming or tech peripherals then yes it would be if no value to you.
> [@Jagster](#):
>
> > [@Heliosurge](#):
> >
> > That has been around since Dial up BBS
>
> And yet it is practically extinct 😏
String threads? Unfortunately no.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [18 augustus 2024 om 17:16 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/19 "2024-08-18T17:16:00Z")
> [@Jagster](#):
>
> I could live with oneliners, if system would force to use several ones, that would come randomly
Yep that is generally how the taglines worked. Random ones in a collection.
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### Author:  [@JimPas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JimPas)
#### Post date: [25 augustus 2024 om 18:20 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/20 "2024-08-25T18:20:06Z")
> [@Jagster](#):
>
> those were just annoying because repetition after repetition. Like hearing same ancient joke dozen time a day 😏
Oh yes! I remember people replying with one sentence and their signatures being several lines. That made for an excess amount of scrolling. I didn’t care for that at all - early to mid-90’s. No wonder I have grey hair. 🧑🦳 😆
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [1 september 2024 om 06:56 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/21 "2024-09-01T06:56:30Z")
> [@JimPas](#):
>
> That made for an excess amount of scrolling. I didn’t care for that at all - early to mid-90’s. No wonder I have grey hair
where I was ppl kept them reasonable around 3 lines tall. Granted on 640x480 didn’t take much to have to scroll. Lol
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [22 mei 2025 om 02:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/22 "2025-05-22T02:15:35Z")
If you’re really worried about screen real estate, could the plugin be modified with a setting to hide signature on mobile?
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### Author:  [@geoff777](https://meta.discourse.org/u/geoff777)
#### Post date: [22 mei 2025 om 10:40 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379/23 "2025-05-22T10:40:30Z")
How about …? If you have a signature yourself, you can see other users’ signatures.
No signature yourself … no signatures visible.
[Volgende pagina](https://meta.discourse.org/t/are-post-signatures-really-a-thing-of-the-past/307379.md?page=2)