Signatures have been disabled

PaulStoffregen

Well-known member
Occasionally spammers get in. That silly "playthru" game stops most bots at registration, but it can't keep out humans determined to post links to their SEO clients' websites.

The most often abused feature is "signatures". Hardly anyone uses them, so I've turned off the signature feature. If anyone was really using a signature, please reply here. There might be a way to turn signatures on, but without links? If anyone really believes the signature feature matters, I'm certainly willing to listen....

If you see spam, please use the "Report Post" button. It's the little black triangle on the left side, under each message.

Those reports go directly to Robin. She isn't highly active on the forum, but we do all enjoy a mostly spam-free forum due to her diligence. She regularly monitors new registrations and looks for patterns spammers follow, like registering several accounts which they leave dormant for months, hoping to evade "new user" filters. She routinely blocks IP addresses.
 
Yep, I go through user accounts pretty regularly. The number 1 way I identify spammer accounts is by looking at those that have something for a signature. Very few legit users have a signature.

If you are from India, Pakistan or China and you are a legitimate user, I apologize in advance if your account is banned. A very high percentage of spammers come from these countries. The best way to prevent this is to post something that indicates you are a legitimate user within a day of opening your account.
 
I've seen some cool things in a couple of signatures in these forums, couple of people linking cool projects and perhaps their (relevantly related) blogs - maybe if senior members can have signatures? Hoping those that I liked the signatures of did happen to be senior members...

Another forum I used to frequent had a system whereby prior to 100 posts users could have neither avatar nor signature, they had a 'cafe' which did not count towards post count and any post moved there or deleted (or jailed) was not counted either - I haven't studied vBulletin at all really but maybe it has this feature not too far from the surface, so to speak.
 
I'll take a look at the settings. I'm pretty sure I've seen something like that. We could actually set the threshold pretty low for allowing signatures. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 would do it.
 
I will be glad to see the often cool things decent users sometimes have in their signatures if it isn't much bother to arrange Robin, thanks very much for looking into it.
 
Sometimes you find very cool projects linked in the signatures, but I agree that a spam-free forum is the most important thing!
 
FWIW - I never click on these (unless by accident) as I assume it is there for no good...

And I would like to say: Thanks Robin!
 
I say block signatures. Why?
1) at best they are a distraction from the point being made in the post and at worst they are irrelevant.
2) they are a form of self promotion and we don't need that. A pertinent, insightful post is the best form of self promotion.
3) they are an attempt to create and project identity. No need for that, we quickly work that out from the substantive content of your post and you can't fake that.
3) most of them are, to be frank about it, in bad taste and usually plainly stupid.
4) and of course, they are abused.

So please, block them. They are a terrible idea. Let's instead focus on saying helpful, insightful and salient things. That is the best way to create an identity and this will be a true identity that you cannot fake.
 
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