No more spoilers in signatures.

[Tim Major]

Funny

Spoiler

Meh.

Um, funny and ok? This is one of the reasons spoilers have been banned in signatures. Very annoying and pointless.

 

[Dene]

petty remarks like "well done for learning a new word" are just childish.

Hi, my name is Dene.

You were mentioning how 3 lines was arbitrary and wanted him to explain the importance of that extra line. However, I was saying that 2 lines is also an arbitrary number, and I think that, should you continue along the same train of thought, it would make sense to remove signatures altogether, as I personally don't see the benefit of an extra two lines. Sure, I use the feature because it is given, but I wouldn't be bothered if signatures were taken away completely. Also, your own signature seems to contradict your statement because clearly, the chat was originally 3 lines long, but you had to condense it into two lines because of the rule. Wouldn't 3 lines or no lines make your signature look so much more neat and organized? I think so.

basically, I'm saying that there is a point to having 3 lines instead of 2 in a signature.

Good for you, but I wasn't "mentioning" anything. I was simply asking him why it was he wants 3 lines. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't see how you struggle to grasp that concept.

 

[masterofthebass]

Um, funny and ok? This is one of the reasons spoilers have been banned in signatures. Very annoying and pointless.

thank you.... you finally said something that I can agree with

 

[cubefan4848]

Um, funny and ok? This is one of the reasons spoilers have been banned in signatures. Very annoying and pointless.

Yeah. This is so true

 

[theace]

Um, funny and ok? This is one of the reasons spoilers have been banned in signatures. Very annoying and pointless.

Mine, ain't it?

 

[Stefan]

ElectricDoodie wrote:
So would this spoiler, in a post, not a sig, be OK?
The "spoiler" will contain a spoiler. Do not click "spoiler" if you do not want to be spoiled.
SPOILER

Looks like you have an real, potentially harmful spoiler there. Even I would say they're ok as long as there's a proper warning like yours. Not like TK 421 who went ahead and wrote a serious movie spoiler with no warning, even after it had been pointed out how dickish that is. If I were a mod, that ******* would be IP-banned now. Same as jms_gears1 with his even unhidden spoiler.

Although even with a warning, a spoiler like his would be bad. He just wrote something like "At the end of movie X, Y happens". Except he actually wrote explicit X and Y. What's the point of that other than being an ass? It's reasonable to *discuss* a movie in spoiler tags, but purely spoiling something is not.

 

[brunson]

Man, it's like living with a five year old. I know this to be true because I live with a five year old. And when I tell her she can't do something it makes her want to do it all the more and then argue about why she should be able to do it. But you know what? She's FIVE. I can't believe the whinging about this subject.

Also, those of you that keep throwing around the term "dictatorship" should understand that this is not a government, it's a privately owned and operated social forum. There's a big difference between a military junta taking over a country by coup then imposing authoritarian control on its citizens by force of might and a site on the internet that was created to discuss solving a puzzle. The main distinction being that you are not forced to participate here.

Would you guys please grow up? Maybe we should discuss cubing or something.

 

[CharlesOBlack]

Take this post with some salt and pepper on it.

Why the big deal? They're just spoilers that don't contain anything. If it gets you so damn pissed off, then just... don't click it. It's that damn simple.
If I really wanted to ignore this rule, then I could just post the same damn thing at the end of every post, such as:

Spoiler

cubing is fun

I don't see why the spoilers should be banned; Having a stupid spoiler sig, imo, is better than saying that stupid thing on every post without [ spoiler]'ing it. Besides, sigs can be stupid without spoilers; no offense, Brunson, but I honestly think your sig is pretty stupid. If you wanna discuss it, just send me a PM and I'll explain it to you.

>Distracting from post content
So do avatars. >.>
read the print version, it doesn't contain sigs, or avatars, or anything else. Just the post content. And it's not that hard, either; just click on Thread Tools > Printable Version.
And if it still distracts you that damn much - make the forum like 4chan, except without pics, where there's pretty much ONLY the post content.

>3 lines instead of 2
2 is too little for anything, really. besides, since this number was given by a rng, why don't we just pick a value - democratically, even if it's just between the mods/admins - that allows you to post thing you want without "distracting from the original content"? Personally, 5 lines would still be fine by me.

posts taste much better with salt and pepper eh

 

[hawkmp4]

Or you could stop complaining and accept that the administration has made a decision and your personal opinion has no bearing on whether they change it or not.

 

[Rpotts]

>3 lines instead of 2
2 is too little for anything, really. besides, since this number was given by a rng, why don't we just pick a value - democratically, even if it's just between the mods/admins - that allows you to post thing you want without "distracting from the original content"? Personally, 5 lines would still be fine by me.

posts taste much better with salt and pepper eh

2 is too little for anything but 3 is plenty? If we had mods and admins vote on this we would have like, no signatures, or very small ones. Most of the mods have posted in this thread and have agreed with cohen. 5 lines of sig would make the average sig longer than the average post, thats not helpful for the forum. Why are sigs that important anyway?

 

[Andrew Ricci]

2 is too little for anything but 3 is plenty? If we had mods and admins vote on this we would have like, no signatures, or very small ones. Most of the mods have posted in this thread and have agreed with cohen. 5 lines of sig would make the average sig longer than the average post, thats not helpful for the forum. Why are sigs that important anyway?

I think a solution would be to spoil all signatures. This way you could make them 5 lines and no one would care because they're hidden. But I can also see why this isn't allowed. People would (from some examples lately) post idiotic stuff like "Snape Kills Dumbledore" and "Meh" and "LOL", so I can see the reason behind Dan banning them. Since I don't have spoilers in my signature, I don't particularly care whether they are banned or not, but they could be potentially useful if idiots didn't abuse them.

 

[CharlesOBlack]

2 is too little for anything but 3 is plenty? If we had mods and admins vote on this we would have like, no signatures, or very small ones. Most of the mods have posted in this thread and have agreed with cohen. 5 lines of sig would make the average sig longer than the average post, thats not helpful for the forum. Why are sigs that important anyway?

3 is more.

Sigs are important because they represent the little bit of freedom we get to say whatever the **** we want without being spammers.

 

[~Adam~]

I think a solution would be to spoil all signatures

I've been thinking that as well.

 

[FatBoyXPC]

So many points I have thought of had already been made (though I wish I would have just taken the time to type them instead of read through 14 pages).

I don't get the basis of the decision, and i completely agree with what Kian said, but i really could care less if there are spoilers in sigs or not.

These words were taken right out of my mouth.

Why are people not being specific with this? I know things need to be done to the forum, but it helps to know what others think needs to be done as well. Being all, "imma be cool and clever and not actually say what I think needs to be done", isn't going to help.

One thing that's been getting on my nerves lately (and there are definitely rules about this in the rules.php page) is the amount of new people coming and posting asking for help. There are also useless thread postings that people end up spamming in, etc. I feel like this whole spoiler thing is very minor compared to the amount of useless posts in threads. I report a lot of them but I seem to be reporting a lot of the same people. I guess it just seems like nothing is done with these reports (but since I can't see the administrative side it's only perception, I realize it may not be reality).

and for all of you complaining, how many of you were here when I was part of the original push for spoilers and went and found the code for it?

You get a cookie for using Google. I'm not sure how far back this was, but it shouldn't be too hard to look at the code for even the simple tags and write similar snippets for them and put them in the same file.

Ideally this will be added to the forum rules at some point. And new members are expected to read all the stickies.

Not all of the new members follow these rules and wee see it on an (almost) daily basis that new members use their first (few) post(s) to ask for help.

I haven't been very active lately and this is the first time I'm seeing this announcement, and I have to say I agree. For anyone who's still looking for a good reason why spoilers shouldn't be allowed in signatures:

1. It's too open to abuse (e.g. nested spoilers) and can be used to skirt the 2 line limit on signatures.
2. This is not the purpose of spoilers. Spoiler tags are used to a) hide actual spoilers that people might not want to read or b) hide large images or sections of text. If you really want to use "Snape kills Dumbledore" as your signature then fine, put it in white text or something, but I have yet to see a spoiler signature that is actually a spoiler or otherwise merits spoiler tags. They're always just spoiler tags for the sake of having spoiler tags and that's just stupid and annoying.

A lot of things here are too open to abuse but we allow that. That feels more subjective rather than objective. You've also somewhat contradicted yourself here:

It's too open to abuse (e.g. nested spoilers) and can be used to skirt the 2 line limit on signatures. This is not the purpose of spoilers. Spoiler tags are used to hide (large) sections of text.

There was some obvious editing done there to show an interpretation. So using a spoiler to hide text that would take up more than two lines a good, or bad thing? Especially when the spoiler itself only takes up 2 lines (until clicked on, but at that point it was the perogative of the user who clicks).

Looks like you have an real

It's not often we can grammar nazi you, Stefan!

Why the big deal? They're just spoilers that don't contain anything. If it gets you so damn pissed off, then just... don't click it. It's that damn simple.
If I really wanted to ignore this rule, then I could just post the same damn thing at the end of every post, such as:

Spoiler

cubing is fun

Another post that took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to post the same idea about circumventing the no spoilers in signatures rule.

I think the main point that the people who are for spoilers in signatures is trying to make is that it's up to the person reading the signatures to click the spoiler button. If they get mad because it isn't what they wanted to see, it's not the user's (user that made the signature) fault for this. If you guys plan to act like this with signatures and spoilers, why aren't you banning the members that register just to post asking for help who obviously didn't use the search function, read through the previous similar threads, etc? Dan, the image in your sig distracts me! Remove it or ban yourself! I personally find signatures on forums quite useless, especially now since we have a profile that has a larger area to fill out (rather than the old forum we had) that we can add stuff there. I do not understand though how there is a difference between putting valid content (ie not nesting spoilers) inside a spoiler tag and providing a link instead.

 

[qqwref]

Man, it's like living with a five year old. I know this to be true because I live with a five year old. And when I tell her she can't do something it makes her want to do it all the more and then argue about why she should be able to do it. But you know what? She's FIVE.

Sorry but I have to point out how terrible this argument is. You are basically saying "this is something a 5-year-old does, so you should not do it." Some 5-year-olds also want to do things they know they enjoy, prefer certain types of foods over others, are friendly with some people and unfriendly with others, want to learn, etc. Are all these behaviors inappropriate or childish because a 5-year-old does them? More importantly, would you say that when any mature person is confronted with a mandate not to do something, they would agree without discussing it?

Anyway, I see some legitimate discussion going on, so it is silly to criticize people for wanting to discuss this announcement. The talk in this thread may lead to a policy on how spoilers may be used in all circumstances, for instance.

The main distinction being that you are not forced to participate here.

While that's technically correct, this argument is pretty much meaningless because speedsolving.com is a community (the main English-language speedcubing community, I'd say).

Would you guys please grow up? Maybe we should discuss cubing or something.

Ah, you seem to be confused about the way the forum is organized. This subforum ("Announcements") is meant for posting and discussing announcements about the forum. If you want to discuss cubing, you should probably go to one of the cubing-related subforums, like "Speedcubing Discussion".

 

[PatrickJameson]

I think 136 posts is enough for this extremely trivial issue. It's done, there's nothing else to discuss and the rule will stay. Signatures will be changed if any of the mods see them.

(Just think about the insanity in the fact that this is 136 posts long for a moment)