so don't ask if you don't want to know
Complaint of the day: signatures
Every-freaking-where!
End the madness. Not just on message boards, but in emails and discussion groups, every online correspondence is littered with these huge signatures.
In my personal opinion, I think signatures should include:
Your Official Name on that site/subject
Phone number IF the correspondence requires a phone number
ONE URL. ONE. Pick the one that has the most information about you people might need.
NO cute sayings.
NO list of every website you’re associated with
NO profound words from your hero of choice
NO links to your pictures of kittens
DO NOT DOUBLE SPACE – DO NOT USE ANY ANIMATION/GRAPHICS
You want to get all cute and fuzzy? Make a MySpace page full of butterflies or puking smilies and use your one URL for that.
Shit! I get sick and tired of scrolling through screen-fulls of signatures to get to the next semi-important part of a conversation. Do you even pay any attention to the crap automatically dumped at the end of every one of your posts? GROW THE FUCK UP! Especially in a more businesslike setting, try to maintain a modicum of professionalism.
Please?
Debbie spellwight Walker
spellwight.livejournal.com
Edited to add a correction: If you want to use a profound quote from your hero in place of a URL, that’s peachy too. What I’m asking for is brevity.
| Print article | This entry was posted by spellwight on 10/24/2008 at 8:45 am, and is filed under Stuff I forgot to itemize. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 1 year ago
Guilty as charged.
about 1 year ago
Erm, then I had to go back to your email signature and see what it was!
Let me edit my rant a bit.
about 1 year ago
*applauds*
about 1 year ago
Word.
No more than four lines, no images, and properly .sig delimited so that email/newsgroup software can remove it automatically.
about 1 year ago
I agree. Put what you want….but keep it short and sweet. I don’t mind, very much, on emails if people have a bit more. But in yahoo groups, on vBBs, etc….please keep it short.
about 1 year ago
Your Official Name on that site/subject
This one actually drives me up the wall on forums and other discussion groups where each post is automatically marked as being made by you. Your (general your) username and avatar are attached to every freaking post! You don’t need to add it again! I think it’s weird when people put their name in their signature; or worse, something like “Love, TheirName”, or even worse, have “Love, TheirName” as a signature and also write it as the last line of their post.
I do, however, think it’s appropriate when they put their RL name in the signature – that way it’s at least a different name from their username. The way you demonstrated above is great.
I also don’t mind cute sayings as much, as long as they are short. Relevant ones are even better.
I hate graphics in signatures, and I hate random huge lists.
I also appreciate it when signatures are relevant to the forum. For example, on Cosplay.com most people have a costume To Do list, or an In Progress list of costumes they are actively working on. This works well, except when people go overboard and make it huge (and rainbow coloured, and double-spaced, and…)
about 1 year ago
Brava!
It doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers you, but I often wonder if the people with the long sigs realize how ineffective they are. I mean, when I see one with 12 lines and blinking graphics I speed right past it. I read the short ones and even check out the URL after the name. By giving me all that info in their sig, they are making me care even less.
Dani in NC
about 1 year ago
Now you’ve got me paranoid; I thought mine was dainty and discreet. Hmmm.
But I do agree with your point. It’s the sparklies and smilies that get me.