Ok, so obviously mods really don't want sigs. Ciber's reasons, I believe, as far as slowing down the boards and wasting moderator's time and management, are valid. Cluttering the boards is an opinion, but I can see where a little less might be better, and there are those who agree with ciber rather than me.
There are also those like me, who really want sigs and won't be happy until some compromise is reached. I thought about this for a while. Then, I read this:
That's alot of money, and I must say hearing that really upped my respect for the guys running GW out of their pockets. That being said, you guys deserve some help with this. We want sigs.Each server costs around $160 a month.
My proposal:
We are now in the process of a sig contest, and when we get finished we will have a fairly sizeable base of sigs which we view as high quality work.
I propose that the top four sigs from the contest, perhaps more if this idea flys, are auctioned off. For $5 a month, or the highest bidder, the person that pays, and ONLY that person, earns the right to have that sig posted with their messages. Furthermore, I also propose we knock the maximum size down to 400x100, and 85kb. Thus, with only a very few people allowed sigs, the sigs themselves smaller, and the sigs made only by experienced people, who know what the file size is and how to keep to it, we reduce clutter, reduce the draw on bandwidth and remove the necessity of mods having to check a million people's sigs.
Going a step further, what if that is an improvement both sides can live with? It helps out the mods with the heavy load of paying for it, reduces their headache, but still allows those who want sigs badly enough to pay for them to have (smaller) sigs. Perhaps, after two months trial run, we could open up requests for sigs again, with a customized sig like the ones made in the thread I started, available to those who want it for $2 a month. With only a few, experienced, approved people making sigs, mods wouldn't have to patrol for ones that are too large, and a limited number willing to pay for them would mean only a few people's sigs would clutter the boards.
Obviously, not everyone, in fact, probably most, are not willing to pay for sigs. Thus, reducing headache and clutter that bothers the mods so much.
However, those that truly want sigs, the ones so vocal (myself definately included) in the recent war about them, are most likely willing to pay for them.
If this is a way to keep the users happier, while helping the mods out both in workload and in the financial burden of maintaining the server, I think this might be the only viable solution.
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