Well, I apologise. All those kind people made me an adoptable within a short space of time, and I wanted to thank then all at once for their kind efforts for little ol' me.... and I'm crap at Paintshop pro, so thats the result.

I will get it changed shortly, once I can figure out something to replace it with!

The sigs that are IMO 'bad' are the ones that stretch the screen, so you have to scoll from side to side to read....

Quote::

The sigs that are IMO 'bad' are the ones that stretch the screen, so you have to scoll from side to side to read....

I know what you mean! *brrrh* I remember someone on the old mlptp had a "screen stretcher" at some point, and it was horrible trying to read any topics that person had replied to. Especially when it was something interesting and people had long replies and you just had to go back and forth trying to read everything they said. It was at a time when the board wasn't even moderated so there wasn't anyone to remove her signature either :/

Chiane wrote:

I've never understood why this place allows that big signatures. It's hard to concentrate on discussion when people write the usual one or two lines of text and then follows a signature that fills over half of the screen... It's just very disturbing and one of the reasons I don't come here that often

I must agree. 300 pixels is huge and enough by itself, and to think that you could actually have 3 that are nearly that size. That *would* take up half the screen, and these pages are slow enough to load even with people having one and two.
It is moderately annoying in regular threads, extremely annoying in 'New Pony' threads when we're sitting here dying to see the new pony pictures, and of course all the siggys load first and it takes 10 minutes. While waiting for Hidden Treasure to show up (lol, what an ironic name in light of the gigantic siggys, no?) I actually went and did some dishes and came back about 5 minutes later and it just finished loading.
Now... "going and doing something ELSE while the computer loads" is something we used to do back in 1988. The only place I have to do it NOW in 2005, is the Arena.

I also find it disconcerting that many of us do have modest, one-image siggys... And I can't speak for the rest, but *I* do that specifically out of consideration for other people here, knowing that the pages would take even longer to load if we all had 2 and 3 big images. Sometimes I feel like people are just cramming sigs down our throats here.

Some of us were starting Primary school in 1988!

I'm not going to argue the point of who has large sigs versus who doesn't, but I have to say that I think what the moderators over at the TP are doing is very fair, and could be something for the moderators here to consider. Everyone is limited to a 50x50 avatar and a sig with a maximum 2 graphics that cannot exceed (if I remember correctly) 180x180 with five lines of text. And yes, I'm the first to admit that the sig and avatar I use here are larger than those specs, but I would certainly resize and/or pick different graphics if limits such as those were imposed. I did exactly that over at the TP. At first, I thought their rules were rather strict, but after a few days of being able to read through topics with a minimum amount of scrolling and loading (I'm using broadband, can you imagine what this is like on a dial-up??), I was very appreciative.

I think possibly what others have been trying to say in this thread is that there are some posters who are "abusing" (unintentionally in most cases) the more lenient avatar/sig rules here, and it's causing the overall enjoyment of the board to deteriorate.

But I'm rambling. My original purpose for replying was to ask whether my graphics were a nuisance to anyone. They are within the current guidelines of this board, but if anyone finds them too big or long to load, please PM me, and I'll make some alterations.

Anyone who needs help resizing sigs, please feel free to make a post in the Sig/Gallery forum there are several of us that are happy to help.

The TP is running under a very strict guideline as to not over power their bandwidth. We don't have such tight restrictions and so can be more flexible. From what I understand their avatar size is 80 x80.
The TP and Arena are very close friends so we do discuss whats better for each other, and what we think works.
Thanks

can i put links to pics? theyre only enlargement links

Links are fine The ones you have look very nice.

Hey guys! Has everyone managed to read this and get stuff sorted??
I will start PMing members tonight to make sure everyone knows!

I got mine all sorts of fixed nice n tiny ^^

i love looking at peoples sigs! the only times i worry is when im at work XD the window is minimized and im trying to scroll through quickly without my co workers questioning why im looking at pictures of cute little pink ponies X3

But i love looking at them, even though i have dial up at home! ^_^

I have to say people have done some amazing upgrades to fit with the rules! Thanks everyone!

I too never understood why this place allows such big signatures.

I do think signatures are nice and they enlighten the board and add some colour etc. But on this board they are just too much.
It sure is out of control when the signature is bigger than the text part of the post.
This is the only place I visit where I have to scroll and scroll forever, to read like, 10 lines of text or so.
And it does make a difference, mostly I tend to go to other boards where things are more overview-able. Feels more relaxed and conveniant that way.

But I guess the explanation is that the vast majority *want* it this way and prefer it.. because otherwise people would complain or comment on it, ne?
And I hardly ever see anyone say anything, well other than now in this topic.
So, apperantly people visit forums mainly to display and look at pictures rather than to chit-chat and discuss..
Sad, but we will have to live with that lol.

Makes me wonder if there are any forums that are even *worse* when it comes to this, like, they allow 1000 x 1000 pixels signatures, and people use it..
So far the Arena is the worst I have seen though..

Tootie,

Isn't it great to have choices in life....

Tootie, if you look around you'll see the majority of members really, really enjoy having images in their sigs and large avatars. Just take a look. That's why we have that guideline set a little larger. A few are complaining but the majority of our members really enjoy expressing themselves through their avatars and signatures. I'm sorry if it slows you down or you have other problems with it. We may decide to go a tad smaller in the future but for now this is what we've decided. It basically comes down to you can't please everyone, but we do our darndest, lol.

I'm locking this thread. This thread was not meant to be a place to complain about our guideline. If you have questions or want to complain, please pm myself or Chief. Thanks! Julie