johnsemlak said:
johnsemlak's .sig said:
OK, now let me just preface this with saying that "useful" is like "too long"--it's very subjective. However, from my POV, the sort of "useful" stuff that should go in a .sig is stuff that (1) is semi-perpetual, (2) is identifying, (3) you need/want people to see over and over again. .sigs are not for adding a whole 'nother topic of conversation, providing lists of links, or otherwise re-transmitting info that is irrelevant to the topic at hand, just 'cause you want to shout and wave it about. You get one, maybe 2 lines of exception to all this--put whatever you want there: quotes, website links, etc. IMHO, if you feel the need to turn it off for subsequent posts in a thread, it's too long.
Personally, if you keep your .sig down to 4 lines (and that's ~80char lines--while most of us don't use such small monitors any more, and things aren't hard wrapped at 72 or 80 chars, it's still a polite length to keep to, emminently readable, and doesn't risk wrapping into 2 or 3 lines), i really don't care what's in it. But if it's any longer than that, it had better be something that i want to be constantly reminded about (like who i just heard from).
So, taking John's .sig (above) as an example, i'd say the only relevant parts would be the "Moscow D&D Club" and "Complete list of E-zines" links, and maybe the X4 link--but probably not.
Or, if you really want all that info in the .sig, it could at least be tightened up a lot. Use text colors or bullets so you can get rid of all those blank lines. Both of the thread links could be trimmed by making the sentence the link and ditch the "post here" bit. Use font tags to smallify everything, not just the last two lines. Use brackets, braces, slashes, pipes, or whatever so that you can put multiple short items on one line. There're a lot of ways to keep the "small .sig is necessary" crowd happy while still putting lots of stuff in, to satisfy yourself.
