Some forums don't allow URLs in signatures.

I'm guessing that this forum allows site URLs (of affiliate sites, not affiliate links) in signatures.

Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Just as we're not going to develop multiple personality disorder and start postiing here under a series of fake names, we're also not going to kid ourselves into believing that you're here every day without a mission.

Many will have their affiliate programs they're pushing, many will be vendoring ad spots on their sites.... we're all here for varying reasons. I think it only natural that we allow you guys signatures. It is, after all, who you are.

All we ask is that you work a bit on those signatures to insure that they don't detract from the cleanliness of the board. We do reserve the right to censor any signatures that we feel are inappropriate or unprofessional.

There are some pre-set limitations on your signature (image size, image dimenstions, etc) imposed by the forum software. I don't happen to know those limitations off the top of my head, but, we are certainly flexible at altering those if you get any errors when you try to create your signatures. Please feel free to experiment and let me know if we need to alter anything.

Also, I know they are doing some testing that suppresses the display of your signature if you have less than a certain number of posts (I think it's 15.) That is purely "testing" at this juncture. We're finding ourselves divided as to whether it's something we want active on the board. We've also discussed not giving shared adsense credit for any posts any shorter than your signature (is that a fair tradeoff?). Again, purely discussion at this point.

Ultimately, we want a board that "gets things done" and is also enjoyable for you to visit. If we ever do anything that violates that mission, please feel free to comment/suggest.

Yup, what you say totally makes sense.

A forum is a place to find useful information and also to discuss issues.

Typically it's not a good idea for affiliates to list their sites anyway, since a lot of material on affiliate sites are not copyright protectable - the content usually belongs to the merchants sharing an affiliate site could lead to many duplicates of the same site, and other side-effects.

One thing though about the multiple personality - I like this feature
( I came accross it in Google Groups ) where they allow a registered user to change their nickname without having to change their login id.

I think they have this feature for a reason. I'm not saying that one should go hyper and start changing their nicknames before makeing every post.

But, what I'm really trying to say is that, sometimes the community gets a certain image of a person who continuously participates in a forum - and sometimes there are situations where one really needs a question answered without people having a preconceived notion of a person's background or personality. In these cases it helps to have the flexibility to change one's nick name, just to ask that one question and then change it back.

Also, forum newbies often make a lot of mistakes - and sometimes a community as a whole gets a negative impression about 1 person. Most people IMHO grow and better themselves and they learn from their mistakes, allowing people to change their nickname gives a person a new chance at the forum.

But I guess, since there's the Ignore by Id feature here, there may be fewer chances of the above situations.

But it's just my opinion.

I think a member's need to change a nickname is directly related to the "temper" of the community. A community of people who want to work, make money and get things done forgives newbie mistakes. A community that only bullies newbies to drive them out of the industry...well.. I definitely see the reason why hiding behind a name and not taking responsibility for your comments.

Ultimately is up to the user to keep their name or make a new one.

I like that response Marifer. I agree with you.

No one deserves to be bullied, when newbies make mistakes there's a nice and polite way to lead them in the right direction. They my not stop making mistakes after their first or second post sometimes it takes them a few more posts.

But treating newbies and others in a polite way and leading them in the right direction eventually makes them productive and makes them contribute in a posetive way.

I think this forum going in the right direction as far as encouraging members to make quality and useful contributions.

Believe it or not, I was once a "newbie." Lol. Most of my emails start with txtilde@.

The reason for that is because whenever I would give my home page url, which was my 14.4 dialup's free homepage they gave me, it was http://www.domain.com/~username/

I kept saying saying h, t, t, p, colon, slash, slash, www.domain.com, slash, wavy line... and being from texas... they called me txtilde. Took me a long time to live that one down =)

I can laugh about it now, but I certainly know what it's like to not be "in the know." As it stands I learn something new everyday... no reason I should ever jump on someone else for something I just happen to know. Who am I to say it's "common knowledge?" My parents don't know how to register domain names. I certainly don't think they're stupid.