Forum Signature

[Clyde]

Just a blasphemous thought: Why not drop the reputation requirement for a signature completely if mere asking gets one enough points to do it anyway? 😉

[celly]

@Clyde and for that Clyde, you get a point.

Everyone, look under your chairs! You ALL get a point!

[mitu]

@Clyde said in Forum Signature:

Why not drop the reputation requirement for a signature completely if mere asking gets one enough points to do it anyway?

It's mainly an anti-spam/bot measure.

[sad_muso]

@Clyde Mere asking? I'll have you know that I've contributed countless pointless posts to this forum over the past month or so! :D

[Retro]

@sad_muso I've given you one too. Every little helps! ;)

[Clyde]

@sad_muso I didn't mean you but @Retro. That said, I don't begrudge anyone a signature. On the contrary, I think anyone should get one for free. 😁

@mitu But are signatures really an issue? They only appear with actual posts which by themselves should expose a spammer/bot really quickly, I would think.

[mitu]

@Clyde said in Forum Signature:

@mitu But are signatures really an issue? They only appear with actual posts which by themselves should expose a spammer/bot really quickly, I would think.

You'd be surprised how sofisticated spammers have become nowadays. We had several situations where the spammers don't post any spam triggering (automatic or via user inspection) measures, only to come back several weeks/months later, edit their posts and insert the spam links. They're still indexed, and you don't see a notification or an update on the posts/topics they've been participating.
Things are not so simple.

[Retro]

@Clyde I didn't ask for upvotes, I simply inquired as to why the signature box didn't appear for me - and I received an answer.

[sad_muso]

It's all good guys :)

[Clyde]

@mitu It's just that I didn't see any spammer use signatures rather than the posts itself, or hear anything about it. I also never saw a forum restrict signatures based on reputation. Even your example speaks about editing posts, not signatures.

That said, if both editing posts and having signatures is dependant on a user's reputation, at least it would be consistant (I don't know if they are in this forum). Forums have different methods to combat spam; for example, one German Linux forum I'm part of only allows editing your own posts for a certain amount of time or until someone replies after it. No more editing after that. It prevents the subsequent spamming you described rather efficiently.

@Retro You're right, I misspoke. My apologies. 😇

[mitu]

@Clyde said in Forum Signature:

@mitu It's just that I didn't see any spammer use signatures rather than the posts itself, or hear anything about it. I also never saw a forum restrict signatures based on reputation. Even your example speaks about editing posts, not signatures.

That was just an example of how simple things are not so simple as far as spammers go.

[BuZz]

Spammers have made posts that are not always picked up. Then they change signature later. It's happened before.

We have a few anti spam measures but a lot of spam is done by people rather than being purely automated, so it's tricky to catch everything.

Needing some reputation to have a signature helps in this case. It's not hard to gain some upvotes. And having a signature isn't that important. Noone reads them anyway. Mine especially. Nor do people often read the sign-up agreement which also contains the same text as my signature :-)

[BuZz]

We also work within the features / capabilities of the forum software. I'd rather work on RetroPie than maintain custom forum plugins. I spend enough time on non retropie code admin type tasks as it is :-)