# Automated Signatures?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [6 februari 2013 om 10:40 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127 "2013-02-06T10:40:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@mootinator](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mootinator)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 18:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/21 "2013-02-06T18:32:12Z")
Of course we agree with you. There’s actually [academic research](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) to suggest that forum signatures are counterproductive.
* * *
@moot Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 18:43 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/22 "2013-02-06T18:43:43Z")
oh dear lord, I’ve been had by a cad 😉
I do love this new forum software, and how we didn’t change any of our behavior.
* * *
_ **jco** _ - MASTER [cheevos](http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Visual-Studio-Achievements-theyre-not-Xbox-live-right) expert. I have _all_ the cheevos. Be cool like me, be a cheevos god.
_Yeah, can you just come in on Saturday, that would be great_ [[[LooksLikeSomeoneMondays.JPNG]]]
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:11 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/23 "2013-02-06T19:11:53Z")
Please tell me you don’t mean like this signature. I think it’s amazing.
PS: yes, only this thread. No, I do not condone them.
* * *
_ **jco** _ - MASTER [cheevos](http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Visual-Studio-Achievements-theyre-not-Xbox-live-right) expert. I have _all_ the cheevos. Be cool like me, be a cheevos god.
_Yeah, can you just come in on Saturday, that would be great_ [[[LooksLikeSomeoneMondays.JPNG]]]
---
### Author:  [@stienman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stienman)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:27 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/24 "2013-02-06T19:27:35Z")
> [@jcolebrand](#):
>
> 
_ **YOINK!** _
* * *
-Adam
I want to stress that I DO NOT get paid to post reviews or test products on this forum. Everything that is featured was bought by me or stated otherwise. Also, I do not offer money to feature anyone in my posts. Everything is contributed willfully and with honest intentions. If you are a company wanting me to review a product I will only give my honest opinion.
- “…but a talking frog is cool!”
- “…if one more person enters the building, it will be empty.”
- “No, but I know where I am.”
- “Yeah, her clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you, anyway.”
     
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:29 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/25 "2013-02-06T19:29:29Z")
a binary clock!!! I _ **love** _ it!!!
* * *
_ **jco** _ - MASTER [cheevos](http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Visual-Studio-Achievements-theyre-not-Xbox-live-right) expert. I have _all_ the cheevos. Be cool like me, be a cheevos god.
_Yeah, can you just come in on Saturday, that would be great_ [[[LooksLikeSomeoneMondays.JPNG]]]
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:31 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/26 "2013-02-06T19:31:36Z")
I have missed Polly 😉
* * *
_ **jco** _ - MASTER [cheevos](http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Visual-Studio-Achievements-theyre-not-Xbox-live-right) expert. I have _all_ the cheevos. Be cool like me, be a cheevos god.
_Yeah, can you just come in on Saturday, that would be great_ [[[LooksLikeSomeoneMondays.JPNG]]]
---
### Author:  [@mootinator](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mootinator)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:31 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/27 "2013-02-06T19:31:53Z")
Looks more base-4 to me.
* * *
@moot Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/28 "2013-02-06T19:32:54Z")
You’re just a hater 😉
who forgets line breaks and must therefore post a new post and not suffer the edit button
* * *
_ **jco** _ - MASTER [cheevos](http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Visual-Studio-Achievements-theyre-not-Xbox-live-right) expert. I have _all_ the cheevos. Be cool like me, be a cheevos god.
_Yeah, can you just come in on Saturday, that would be great_ [[[LooksLikeSomeoneMondays.JPNG]]]
---
### Author:  [@stienman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stienman)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/29 "2013-02-06T19:36:36Z")
> [@jcolebrand](#):
>
> I have missed Polly 😉
You might find her [around](http://try.discourse.org/users/pollyanna)…
* * *
-Adam
I want to stress that I DO NOT get paid to post reviews or test products on this forum. Everything that is featured was bought by me or stated otherwise. Also, I do not offer money to feature anyone in my posts. Everything is contributed willfully and with honest intentions. If you are a company wanting me to review a product I will only give my honest opinion.
- “…but a talking frog is cool!”
- “…if one more person enters the building, it will be empty.”
- “No, but I know where I am.”
- “Yeah, her clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you, anyway.”
     
---
### Author:  [@mootinator](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mootinator)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/30 "2013-02-06T19:37:53Z")
It was more a case of forgetting to leave a blank line before my line break.
## That doesn’t do the same thing, apparently.
* * *
@moot Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:39 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/31 "2013-02-06T19:39:07Z")
damnit, you edited! You bastard! Don’t you know how this works?
* * *
_ **jco** _ - MASTER [cheevos](http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Visual-Studio-Achievements-theyre-not-Xbox-live-right) expert. I have _all_ the cheevos. Be cool like me, be a cheevos god.
_Yeah, can you just come in on Saturday, that would be great_ [[[LooksLikeSomeoneMondays.JPNG]]]
---
### Author:  [@mootinator](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mootinator)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:40 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/32 "2013-02-06T19:40:48Z")
Clearly not. I also have trouble with the Englishes today.
* * *
@moot Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
---
### Author:  [@macek](https://meta.discourse.org/u/macek)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 19:55 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/33 "2013-02-06T19:55:14Z")
Any _useful_ information I’ve ever seen in a forum signature could easily be put in a user profile. If a reader wants to learn more about a specific poster, they can simply click the username to see the poster’s profile. No reason to repeat this information hundreds of times.
---
### Author:  [@stienman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stienman)
#### Post date: [6 februari 2013 om 20:10 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/34 "2013-02-06T20:10:50Z")
Love your inceptidenticon.
Wish they’d implement signatures already, I’m not going back and editing all the previous posts every time I change my signature.
ALSO I forgot the emo quote at the end of my signature HOW SILLY OF ME.
FIXED.
* * *
-Adam
I want to stress that _ **I DO NOT** _ get paid to post reviews or test products on this forum. **Everything** that is featured was _bought by me_ or stated otherwise. Also, I do not offer **money** to feature anyone in my **posts**. Everything is contributed **willfully** and with honest **intentions**. If you are **a** company wanting me to **review** a product I will **only** give **my** honest _opinion_.
###If you are a _ **TRUE** _ geek you only need the punchline:
- “…but a talking frog is _cool!_”
- “…if one more person enters the building, _it will be empty_.”
- “No, but I know where I am.”
- “Yeah, her clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you, anyway.”
- Those who know binary, and those who don’t.
     
###_ **I am reaching but I fall and the stars are black and cold** _
---
### Author:  [@chronodekar](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chronodekar)
#### Post date: [7 februari 2013 om 03:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/35 "2013-02-07T03:45:05Z")
I’ll freely admit that this (the examples above) is NOT what I meant as “signature”. Or at least, they are good examples of really bad ones.
Signatures need limits - either in pixel height or in number of lines permitted.
Either way, its obvious I’m not going to have much success with the good folks here, so I’ll just settle for some plugin to solve my needs.
---
### Author:  [@stienman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stienman)
#### Post date: [7 februari 2013 om 04:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/36 "2013-02-07T04:38:43Z")
A plugin is the best solution for this.
Signatures are a throwback to email and newsgroups where the body of the message was the only information one could glean from the post. You couldn’t tell if a person from an edu address was a professor or a student unless they told you so. You didn’t know if they wanted to be connected via other methods and how you might do that unless they added to their message.
On forums signatures morphed into a show n tell, especially when early forums had lousy user pages.
Now that forums support user pages with instant messaging addresses, twitter, Facebook, and even WoW identities, there is no practical reason to continue to support the signature.
Further, signatures break the flow of reading, are often abused even with strict limits, and introduce redundant duplication, since every one of your posts is going to have the same bit of information.
There will eventually be a plugin because many people believe its important to have them for those users who expect them, but the default discourse forum will not have them, and will expect people to use the user pages for that information, and the topic pages for on topic information, rather than littering them with little soapboxes everywhere.
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [7 februari 2013 om 04:39 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/37 "2013-02-07T04:39:21Z")
But, to be fair, to most forum participants, the above _are_ signatures.
You really need to rigorously define what you mean. Those give us bounds we can work within.
And yes, we did act like assholes 😉 Just to prove the point. And not just to you, but to anyone who comes in and says “why not signatures???”
“either in pixel height or number of lines permitted” … so, if I have one line of text I can `blah blah blah
` right? Those build into multiline 😉 That’s not permitted. So now it’s a matter of height. Well if you’re doing something with height, just keep it restricted to the user-page.
Also, thanks for being a good sport and letting us have fun here.
---
### Author:  [@chronodekar](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chronodekar)
#### Post date: [7 februari 2013 om 04:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/38 "2013-02-07T04:52:39Z")
> [@jcolebrand](#):
>
> And yes, we did act like assholes 😉 Just to **prove the point.** And not just to you, but to anyone who comes in and says “why not signatures???”
While I am a bit miffed with the way things went, fact of the matter is, this thread now serves as a perfect example of what typically goes wrong with signatures (and something I forgot when I made the original request).
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned on the internet - its that an example goes a LONG way to prove a point than some theoretical discussion. 😄
So thanks everyone. For showing me something I forgot.
---
### Author:  [@jcolebrand](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jcolebrand)
#### Post date: [7 februari 2013 om 04:58 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/39 "2013-02-07T04:58:54Z")
Just kindly take it in the spirit it was intended, and I’m all for it 😃
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [7 februari 2013 om 05:02 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127/40 "2013-02-07T05:02:44Z")
Even so, how does this improve Discourse?
* * *
Sam Saffron, CDCK
🐄 🌝
[Previous page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automated-signatures/1127.md?page=3)