I looked through most of the profile options and found nothing about signatures. I also looked to see if there were any similar suggestions and there were not. I wanted to know if there is a specific reason why there is no signature option, or was it just overlooked until now.
The developers of Discourse intentionally left signatures out of the forum software because signatures are distracting. I am having trouble finding the link to the relevant discussion on the Discourse forums, but it’s there somewhere.
Personally, I think this was a good decision. You are able to edit your user card, though. User cards are functionally similar to signatures.
Ok first off, moved to meta since this is a suggestion for the forums. Second off I personally say no to any form of automated forum signatures (it’s extremely intrusive and annoying to see the same thing printed every time someone posts). More discussion of this was done on the actual discourse forums here.
I believe I actually suggested this a while back in The Lounge (Regular Only Category). I’ll see if i can find it and move it to meta so others can see.
What if signatures were restricted to a single line of immutably sized, colored, and positioned text? I get why flashy banners would be annoying, but plain text would add a bit of flavor I think.
Honestly even if they were restricted to be “non-obtrusive” (in itself debatable), the only thing people would put in their sig is a link/shoutout/whatever to their own site/server/plugin/whatever OR a “clever/witty/funny” comment that no one cares about anyway.
There’s a thing going on another forum (Discourse) where if you put anything inappropriate in your sig, it gets changed to a pony picture for 30 days.
We could do that if someone puts a server in theirs
The good point about Discourse is that it is built around a principle of high readability to the point you just jump from one comment to an other without stopping your reading flow or even realizing it sometimes.
Adding signatures would break that. They largely usually serve for promotion of yourself and/or of your content. Now I believe if content is worth promoting the community will judge it by itself and keep the thread alive and on top.
So I’m personally strongly against the idea. Profile cards are good enough.