NationStates Jolt Archive

To ease the heavy load on the moderating shoulders of the forum mods, this is the Signature Squad thread!

SIGNATURE GUIDELINES - UNOFFICIAL VERSION
THESE ARE MY PERSONAL IDEA'S ON THE SIGNATURE ISSUE.
Signatures on the forum were thought to be fun and an added value to RPs and players. Unfortunately, this boon is abused by many players who add virtually everything to their signature, ranging from dozens of smileys, links to every single post they have written, bright colours or what-have-you-not. Sigs can be extremely irritating, especially a sig is a lot bigger than one's post. IF this thread gets an official seal of approval, then I think it'd be reasonable for people to report overly large or annoying signatures.

You do the reporting, the mods do the changing.
In my opinion, there's a simple solution to large signatures to the moderation staff: delete them and save settings. Not to sound like a jerk here but...

Long live the States and Teritorries
Current States and Teritorries
********
******** Reform
****** Island

Member of The Commonwealth of Independant Nations
Member of MAP
Member of FIN
FIN LINK

Security Levels

SEVERE
Severe Level

Threatening
Very High Level

Elevated
High Level

Signifigant
Signifigant Level

Low
Low Level

None
No Level

Current Level-Severe-State of EmergancyThis is plain unacceptable. That's why this thread is made. I'm here to make NationStates fun for everyone, and things like that just ruin threads.

Allowed Around 4 smileys
8 Lines of text or less
Normal colours
Font size 1 to 3
1 quote block

Disallowed An excessive amount of smileys (above 4)
Too many lines of text (exceeding 8)
Seizure invoking colours (all extremely bright colours; pink, azure, toxic green etc)
Too large font (4 and upwards)
Insults
Links to offensive, pornographic or gore sites
Links to godhates... sites
Personal information of another forum user
Using a signature as flamebait by adding something emberrassing or whatever
multiple quoteblocks

If this is put into effect, it might be a bad idea to abbreviate the squad as SS.... just for European historical reasons....but whatever...

The only thing that is actually new here is the smiley count and the specification of font sizes. Everything else is covered explicitly or implicitly in the The One-Stop Rules Shop. As always, we encourage the reporting of excessive sigs, as we don't always read every thread or have signatures turned on.

Rather than hand out official warnings, I've been known to send out this telegram:(This is a standardized message going to anyone with a 9+ line sig. It is not a warning, nor did you get picked because of your ideology.)

Per the newly clarified rules, please shorten your forum signature. 8 lines is the maximum, including blank lines.

Here are some tips for shortening your sig. As this is a form letter, some of these may not apply.
Quotes in quote boxes take up a minimum of five lines ("Quote", top line, "Originally posted by", the quote itself, bottom line), so you might want to eliminate those.
Remove all those extra blank lines and space things using the [center] and [right] tags instead. Be aware that long lines wrap to form new lines in some browsers, so your eight lines might look like 10 or 11 to me.
Consider a smaller font size if you currently use large fonts. Excessive use of the [size] and [color] tags, while not illegal, are often considered annoying.
You might also shrink links and put them on a single line.

Thank you for cooperating.

~ Frisbeeteria ~
NS Forum Moderator
This is a handy unoffical guide, but it needs to remain unofficial.

The whole Nazi-joke thing isn't that funny. You might get a little more credibility if you didn't refer back to one of the worst genocides in the history of life on earth...

You have spelling nazis, soup nazis, real nazis in this game and you are worried about using SS as an abbreviation for Signature Squad? What do I have to use according to you? Signature-Squad-Not-To-Be-Associated-With the-Real-Nazi-SS?

Oh please

I do not think that you should regulate a persons signature.

Regulating signatures is done to avoid things that would naturally violate the forum's and NS's TOS, as well as keep topics to a decent length. If someone had a signature like the example in the first post, or has a signature like this:

I am the esteemed President of NaTiOn X

I r00lz teh wrld!!!!1!!!one!!!
:mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5:

(Insert random obscenities here)

and wrote practiacally every other post in a major thread, you'd have to admit it would be a little annoying after a very short while.

The Seperatist states - Well, and this from the point of view of a player and regular user of many forums, sometimes you must.

It makes absolutely no sense having pictures in signatures if all they do is clutter the thread and make it look disgusting and unappealing. Thankfully, we do not have to put up with such madness here.

Also, scrolling can become quite a tedious, if not irritating, task. Having to scroll down for ages just in order to access the full text of a topic with 20 replies because one of the poster has "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" in his sig, is the main cause of internet-induced insanity.

Ok, that was an exaggeration, but you get my point. Songs, poems, and any other pieces of text/links that require more than 10 lines or 500 characters are a waste of time, space, and resources.

If you really think every forum user MUST read the lyrics to your favorite song, post them in a new topic.

The Seperatist states: Some of the silly signatures which I've seen around the International Incidents forum were averaging longer then the players posts... it is the entire reason I keep all signatures turned off so I can't see them (and find it easier to read threads).

It would be nice to see much more restraint from Nationstates Players with signatures, the fact that there are a large number of players who have huge signatures listing their 15+ alliances shows that we need moderation to keep it under control.

the fact that there are a large number of players who have huge signatures listing their 15+ alliances shows that we need moderation to keep it under control.
It would also be appreciated if people didn't suffer from such sigs silently. Hardly anyone reports excessive sig length, probably under the assumption that the all-seeing mods would have done something about it if they saw it. As I also keep sigs turned off (for the same reasons as Iuthia), I only ever see bad sigs when I make a specific sweep with sigs turned on. Therefore, those of you who see them contantly would be doing us all a favor by mentioning nation names occasionally.

If you're worried about being labeled 'a snitch', bring it to #themodcave on IRC. I'm always logging there, and will catch them if you post them. Just say "NationName has a huge forum sig" and we'll check it out. You don't even need to wait for a response. Thanks.

I'll keep that in mind, it's not that I'm afraid of being labelled a snitch, it's more that the only time I see signatures is when I'm not logged into my nation.

Heh, I also tend to find signatures which manage to fit the guidelines given by Guffingford rather annoying as well... I guess I've had signatures turned off long enough for them to all look rather unseemly inbetween posts. I also find myself turning my own signature off (a several links made small) after the first post.

But like I said, I'll keep it in mind, I won't go out of my way to find them but if I notice them I'll point them out.

If help is needed I would be glad to assist. Megh.

If you dont want to see sigs, then just turn them off in your settings.

And you're welcome to do so. However, for those who would prefer to see them (such as me), it would be very nice if people would use some sense when writing them.

So, does this hypothetical group have mod blessing? Megh.

So, does this hypothetical group have mod blessing?

I hope not. Might as well make them a mod if they're "officially recognized."

So, does this hypothetical group have mod blessing? Megh.
Anyone who spots rule-breaking in the forums is welcome to post here. As most of the qualifications in the first post are already rules, nothing much has changed.

Do we sanction people to go out under this banner and harass users with objectionable sigs? No.