Forum Moderators and Rules/Guidelines

[Astro Forever]

Hello!

Just a friendly reminder about signature's size as written in the rules and guidelines. They seem to get bigger and bigger these days! I don't want to single anyone, actually I probably couldn't give many nicknames off the top of my head right now but I noticed several big ones. The problem isn't so much horizonally, but vertically sometimes it's almost like a whole post within a post.

Signature images are limited to 400x100x75kb
If you would like an image in your signature, it may be no more than 400 pixels wide, 100 pixels tall and may not exceed 75 kilobytes in size. A signature image counts as 5 lines of text (see below). Smilies do not count towards this limitation. Some exceptions may be made for signatures that are just over the recommended limit.

It was determined that a 100px vertical size and a single line were okay (as in my own signature), but of course you can opt for more text instead.

Thank you!

[Astro Forever]

Hello,

Okay we need some help, we have a little problem on the forum. It isn't my intention here to bash anybody so if somebody has something else to complain about or wants to single somebody, please refrain to do so. All we want is cooperation from now on, okay? I think I'm going to lock this thread for 24 to 48 hours so what happened last time doesn't happen again...

I'll start by giving an example: I've opened the caption thread this weekend. It's fine to post once in that thread so Dragonrider may have a reminder to choose a winner if he comes on the forum, but please, there is no need to have 7 or 8 posts in a row for that reason, it keeps the thread on top for no reason and makes everybody else open the thread more than once expecting a caption or a new picture and then there's nothing. And the day Dragonrider posts the winner, or the day we start a new round, then maybe people won't bother opening the topic and will miss the round.

I see the same people chatting around with each others one the forum but as another poster said in another thread yesterday, this isn't an instant messaging system. Why don't you start one thread in the "General Discussion" forum and keep all the chat in that single thread? This way you can still post as much as you want instead of going off topic in so many threads. It's too bad when we come here and there is no Epsilon pictures in the Epsilon pictures thread, no captions in the caption thread, no motivational posters in the motivational posters thread, almost no pictures anymore in the "share picture of your astroboy collection" thread, etc. We don't know where to look for what we want to read or see anymore.

Thanks!

Edited to add: I'm opening the thread again... you may post to ask for clarifications or make suggestions, but please, this isn't the place to vent. Please send the moderators a private message if you want to do so. Thanks!

[Astro Forever]

I'll add a precision because more than one person reacted to the post in which I mentioned smilies, so I thought I'd clarify what I meant.

I love smileys myself! I'm just trying to make some people write posts with more content so we do not have to scroll through a few pages with chat like messages between the on topic posts.

If somebody posts something really funny, it's okay to reply with a post like this:

Sometimes it can be pretty much all there is to reply to a fun caption or motivational poster, because what else could we do, describe the picture? Jeffbert himself makes posts like these, I do it myself at times.

But when, within the same day, in the same topic, when the discussion is off topic or barely on topic, I see some people sending posts like this (by that I mean that all there is in the post is a smiley), 2 or 3 times, that's one kind of posts we could do without, because in the end, it contribues to everybody else having to browse through a few pages day after day to get to what is interesting to them.

It's just a matter of not overdoing it. Of course, if there is text in the post, one can add as many smilies as they want through the text. That's something else.

[Astronomical girl]

i have no qualms and i see what you mean less smilies without words
that is understandable and reasonable

[Astro Forever]

Hello,

I think this is going to please many members! As I said a few days ago in another thread, I e-mailed Mark over the restrictions to avatars and signatures. Here are the new guidelines:

Avatar and Signature Guidelines

Our forum allows you to use your own custom avatar and signature which will appear alongside each of your posts. Please try to keep the following in mind when choosing an avatar or signature.

* Avatars are limited to 100x100x200kb
This means your avatar may be no more than 100 pixels wide or tall and may not exceed 200 kilobytes in size.
* Signature images are limited to 640x100x200kb
If you would like an image in your signature, it may be no more than 640 pixels wide, 100 pixels tall and may not exceed 200 kilobytes in size. A signature image counts as 5 lines of text (see below). Smilies do not count towards this limitation. Some exceptions may be made for signatures that are just over the recommended limit.
* Text in signatures.
In general, try not to have a signature that is going to be larger than 90% of your posts. You may have up to six (6) lines of text in your signature at the default font size. Images count as 5 lines (see above), this means you may only have one line of text if using an image in your signature.

I would ask everybody to please be very careful with the 640 pixels limit, because that ensures that somebody with a 1024 pixels resolution will not get an horizontal scrolling bar everywhere on the forum. Statistics shows that there are still about 20% of web users who are concerned.

[Astronomical girl]

could you make an example?

[Alittleacorn]

o.o D-Does that mean we can have bigger signatures?

[Astro Forever]

So yes, that means you can have bigger signatures. They can be a little bit wider (it used to be 400 pixels), but the allowed size in kilobytes has been increased too.

Avatars size in pixels remains the same, but there are more room for animations as the limit in kilobytes has been doubled or tripled.

[Astronomical girl]

this is good to hear

[Alittleacorn]

So originally it was 400 x 150 (i think) now it's 640 x 200... _____ [I](drools)[/I

Astro Forever, I wuv you!