Sigs

Information usually contained in a sig block includes the poster's name, phone number and email address, along with other contact details if required, such as URLs for sites owned or favoured by the author. A witty or profound quotation is often included (occasionally automatically generated by such tools as fortune), or an ASCII art picture. Strict rules of capitalization are not followed (example, it is very en vogue to write "tel" instead of "Tel" to designate telephone). Among some groups of people it has been common to include self-classification codes, though the practice is waning.

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On web forums, the rules are often less strict on how a signature block is formatted, as Web browsers typically are not operated within the same constraints as text interface applications. Users will typically use a "signature" text area in their given profile for input, which can then allow a user to turn off signatures. Depending on the board's capabilities, signatures may range from a simple line or two of text to an elaborately-constructed HTML piece. Images are often allowed as well, including dynamically updated images, usually hosted remotely and modified by a server-side script.

Signatures are seen as an art form by many of their creators, and there are many websites centered around their creation and display. Most of these websites have competitions, battles and a signature of the week contest, where members submit their entries to have them featured on the main page.

According to the Urban Dictionary:

"Word used to describe people who are living with their mom and making over 1000 mostly useless posts a month on message boards and pretending to be serious webmasters in order to earn $150 per month for the signature space under their posts."

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Sig whores have either got a deal with someone whereby they'll post x amount per day, week or month giving exposure to their sig sponsor or they have affiliate links in their sig (selling anything from webhosting to domain names, webmaster referrals to affiliate programs (so other webmaster can join) to links to porn sites (so surfers can join).

The question of a proper signature can cause perhaps more arguments than any other single netiquette issue (besides spam). Superficially, and technically the main issues would seem clear:

* No more than four lines. Occasionally called the "4-line McQuary limit".
* Use "-- " as the beginning marker.

However, as you'll see, it is not quite that straight-forward.

Net etiquette (the "netiquette") and practice dictate about four lines at a maximum. This is a sensible and commendable restriction. But contrary to the common belief and frequent claims its nature is that of a recommendation. For example RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines by CyberNOTHING state "If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer than 4 lines." (The "-- " beginning marker is not counted as one of the four lines.) Likewise A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community states "Don't Overdo Signatures". [Underlining is mine.] Furthermore, on the technical level some programs and ISPs automatically limit the signature length to the said four lines.

Many modern email and newsreader programs automatically identify the start of the signature part of a message from the "-- " token. (Note: dash, dash, space.) This is a programs related convention. Again, sensible to use, but the actual netiquette status is ambiguous.

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As well as discussing, helping, asking or bouncing ideas off other active Lensmasters at the official Squidoo forums SquidU.com you can also have a sig accompany each post.

To add a sig to your SquidU profile do the following...

Be logged into your Lensmaster account at SquidU.com

Click on the Profile tab.

Under the Profile Menu click on Personality.

SquidU has size restrictions... Maximum length: 500 characters, maximum lines: 4