Mer Sane Scraps
DO NOT PM ME ASKING TO SIGN!!!! IF YOU WANT TO SIGN, REPLY TO THIS THREAD!!!
DO. NOT. QUOTE!!!
DO. NOT. QUOTE!!!
[size=15]READ THIS OR DIE!!!
News Flash: This is DEAD.
Seriously, around 20k replies and an estimated 16k signs; have we gotten our sigs back? No, so why bother? There's no way I could get all your sigs even with extra help, and honestly, I don't even care much about this anymore. The mods are very unlikely to take this seriously no matter what I do to it. So, please, for your sanity and mine, no more posting. No more thumbs-upping. Let this die. It was fun while it lasted, but it's time to let this go, mmmkaaay?
And please, the sake of all that is good and holy: STOP PMING ME. kthx.
I don't care WHAT you want to tell me. Just don't PM me! Do you have any idea how annoying it is to get all these random PMs? They're like death on a PM server. Spam my inbox with worthless, "Don't give up!" spam, and I will report you without hesitation. Yes, it is spamming. So don't be surprised when your account gets suspended for PM spamming.
Seriously, around 20k replies and an estimated 16k signs; have we gotten our sigs back? No, so why bother? There's no way I could get all your sigs even with extra help, and honestly, I don't even care much about this anymore. The mods are very unlikely to take this seriously no matter what I do to it. So, please, for your sanity and mine, no more posting. No more thumbs-upping. Let this die. It was fun while it lasted, but it's time to let this go, mmmkaaay?
And please, the sake of all that is good and holy: STOP PMING ME. kthx.
I don't care WHAT you want to tell me. Just don't PM me! Do you have any idea how annoying it is to get all these random PMs? They're like death on a PM server. Spam my inbox with worthless, "Don't give up!" spam, and I will report you without hesitation. Yes, it is spamming. So don't be surprised when your account gets suspended for PM spamming.
Seriously, I'm not even going to bother updating the blacklist anymore! Even when the above sentence is the first thing anyone sees on this page, every day I get at least thirty illiterate PMs saying, "y0 h0m13 s1ghn m3 up 4 t1hs p3t1sh0n!!one11!!1" If it weren't for the few intellectual PMs I get from people who bother to read at least the first couple of paragraphs, I'd have set my PMs to friends only by now! </rant>
Announcement 3/30/07, Friday
Okie-dokie... my PMs are OFFICIALLY friends only now! I'm sorry, I just get too much n00bish spam, and I can't take it anymore! Affiliates are still open; keep reading for details. But until further notice, my PMs are FRIENDS ONLY!!
Hello, I'm Becs1234. As a lot of you may have noticed, our forum signature limit has suddenly been lowered to a frugal 255 characters. 255 characters is barely enough room for a questbar-- let alone all the other things we just have to have in our signatures! A lot of us can't live without a questbar and something funny in our signatures!
(For those of you dumb enough to not notice, "can't live" is what we call hyperbole, AKA exaggeration to express a point.)
And please, read the WHOLE THING through before you post or say anything!
This here is a petition to get back our normal, 1500 character signatures back. (Please note: "1500 character" is crossed out. I realized I made a mistake with it and crossed it out. Kthnx.)
Awesome Idea you should all listen to!
Click it. Now. If you truely want more sig room, take a look at this, because it brings up an excellent point. If we boycott one of the ways Gaia makes a shitload of money off us, THEN they might listen!
Okay, everyone? I'm officially 150-something pages and 30-something PM's behind in this. I think we've attracted enough attention. So go ahead, bump away, make my job a bit easier.
Now, before ANY of you read on, read this message first. This is not for infinite signature room. It's for more room. 255 characters is ridiculously small! All we really want is a questbar, a random image, and a funny quote or two. There will ALWAYS be n00bs who want to pagestretch with signatures, and that can't be helped. N00bs will never go away, as much as we all want them to. But we just want more room!
Moreover, this is not, as someone called it, a "vendetta against the mods." I know our mods work hard to keep this place running, and I do respect them for it. I am not by any means intending to criticize the way the mods are running Gaia. I just want to get the point across that 255 characters is ridiculously small. So anyone who says "I hate those ******** mods" in relation to this is not understanding what I'm getting at. The only reason I would put up someone's story that contains this sort of thing is because other than that, they bring up a good point.
Plus, it's just SO ANNOYING when you go update your signature, when it was fine before, then you find out it's one character over the limit. So you go back to fix it, and BANG-- there's no unnecessary words or anything to take out!
Also, if a mod by chance runs into this petition, it would be nice if they could either PM me or respond to this with a little response on the matter. heart
Oh, and one more thing:
By fudgie10
Update 3/4/07
2000 SIGNATURES!! Can I get a "Booyah!" from everyone? Once again, how many signatures will this take, Gaia?
More stories added, blah blah blah... you know the rest by now.
More stories added, blah blah blah... you know the rest by now.
Update 2/17/07
New affiliates, and I added a few more things: a preface, more arguments, and more banners among them.
255 Characters
1010101010101010101010101010001111010101010101010101010101 0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101
0101010101010101010101010101010101010010101010011111101010 1010101010101010101010101010101010101010111111111111111111 00001010
0101010
I know we can't have n00bish, infinitely-big siggies, but 255 is small. See above demonstration.
Blacklist which I won't bother with anymore
- Kiki_Cat: PMing me
Ceestan: PMing me
Sacred Demon Heart: Quoting first post
chibbie7636: Quoting first post
Crouching_Tiger: Pagestretching
Asuka Red: PMing me
[.[]Heart[].[].[]Soul[].]: PMing me
darkshark105: Quoting first post
Soccer_basket-ball: Quoting first post
Darien108: PM'ing me
okami_of_konoha: PM'ing me
errorz: Quoting first post/ pagestretching
Haruhi10114: n00bish PM
PSO_Stephen: Quoting first post/ pagestretching
cameron1194: quoting first post/ pagestretching
kute kittee: n00bish PM
Black_Rose10: PMing me
Retainer456: PMing me to sign
Zimary: PMing me to sign
bleeding nitemares: PMing me to sign
Crissangel1010: PMing me to sign
kawaii maho: PMing me to sign
bmlkiddo: PMing me to sign
Leonna: PMing me to sign
dark prince of fire: Sending a n00bish PM that I don't even know what the hell he's trying to say
Lady_Kaoria: PMing me to sign
David Ruffin: PMing me to sign
goldenmare: Some illiterate PM of some... sort
Quote:
ANNOUNCEMENT!!
OKAY. A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN COMPLAINING THAT I HAVE BEEN "FALSE ADVERTISING" WITH THE WHOLE "1500 CHARACTER" THING. I
UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS AN UNREALISTIC AMMOUNT. IT IS EXAGGERATION TO GET MY POINT ACROSS. DEAL WITH IT. WE JUST WANT THE LIMIT TO BE A HELL OF A LOT LARGER THAN A MEAGER 255. THAT'S ALL. DAMN IT.
OKAY. A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN COMPLAINING THAT I HAVE BEEN "FALSE ADVERTISING" WITH THE WHOLE "1500 CHARACTER" THING. I
UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS AN UNREALISTIC AMMOUNT. IT IS EXAGGERATION TO GET MY POINT ACROSS. DEAL WITH IT. WE JUST WANT THE LIMIT TO BE A HELL OF A LOT LARGER THAN A MEAGER 255. THAT'S ALL. DAMN IT.
Terms: (Subject to change at any time.)
IE: Let's say that someone has a gradient text, or something similar, in their signature. The only part of anything that significantly takes up connection time is the text that people actually see. It's not like we're putting Javascript or PHP in our signatures or anything! Get my drift?
There must be something on the signature editing page that will tell you that you're outside any limit, not just the character one. This way, fines for signatures "over the byte limit" are actually fair, because we actually knew.
The signature limit must be brought up to anywhere between 325 and 450 characters.
To avoid abuse, there must be limits on everything else. The limit for images should remain the same: 500x500px maximum. The limit for the number of images per signature is a maximum default of 4. But...
The four images in the signature might be relatively small. That being the case, this limit may not be fair. There should be a way to make it so that if the images are small, there should be more images allowed in the signature.
The Gaia admins cannot, under any circumstances, over-fine Gaians for a small infringement of the signature limits.
There must be an option so people can turn off signatures. This is in case some people have slow connections.
If increasing our limit for signatures isn't "feasible," as it would be called, then the admins can at least make it so BBCode doesn't add to the character count.
IE: Let's say that someone has a gradient text, or something similar, in their signature. The only part of anything that significantly takes up connection time is the text that people actually see. It's not like we're putting Javascript or PHP in our signatures or anything! Get my drift?
There must be something on the signature editing page that will tell you that you're outside any limit, not just the character one. This way, fines for signatures "over the byte limit" are actually fair, because we actually knew.
Arguments and Counterarguments
"It was a glitch in the system before!"
And we liked it that way. Deal with it.
"Longer signatures take up more bandwidth on gaia!"
Perhaps I should introduce you to the Gaia donation system. This is something in which we can donate money to Gaia, so it can run properly. There are many Gaians who donate money to Gaia every month, and some donate a lot of it on a monthly basis. They don't just donate for the special donation items-- We're actually trying to help Gaia function well. The least they can do with all our money is buy more bandwidth so our signatures can be longer; not spend it on themselves, that is. 255 character signatures is simply not enough, I'm sorry.
And if people have so much money to donate to Gaia monthly, then why can't they spend it on a better internet connection instead? Then you can see signatures without having to deal with a slow connection. Thus, this problem dissappears.
And if it's a server problem, can't they just buy better/more servers? I think a good estimate for the donation money Gaia receives monthly is in the millions of dollars. Let's say ~ $8,390,000 (Since we're growing so fast, these numbers will steadily increase; info from this article, a fairly recent one, for that matter). They have to pay their workers, let's say there's ~1,000 of them getting payed ~$4,000-$5,000 a month. That leaves about half of the donation money--$4,000,000-- to be used for other things. They put a quarter of that in savings-- left with $3,000,000. Pay for their bandwidth/web hosting, probably ~$200-~$500, left with a grand total of $2,999,700. With this they can surely get some better/more servers.
"YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK AGAINST THE ADMINS!! GO DIE!!!"
Actually, I have the full right to say whatever the hell I want. The internet is not owned by any one specific entity. Thus, no one person can say you have no freedom of speech on the internet.
(I changed the whole America thing, okay? Please, stop pestering me about it!)
"I think they should spend our donation money on making more games, the quest system, the battle system..."
Did I say they have to spend it all on more bandwidth? No, I did not. You greedy bastards.
"YOU are being greedy too, you want more signature length!"
Yes, and that's all. We just want more signature room. You want a whole battle system. And a quest system. And more games. Talk about the stove calling the kettle black.
Also, more bandwidth would mean more room for games and all that crap you want. Half the time, they don't even load right, so you lose. Futher evidence that we need more bandwidth.
"If you can't fit something in your signature, then put it in your profile!"
Forum signatures have become, at least normally, something funny or otherwise entertaining at the end of someone's forum post. If you can't fit it in your signature, then no one can see it. Sigs have really become a way to express yourself within a small space. But if you can't fit anything in there, it's useless. Everyone needs to express themselves somehow.
Besides, people look at signatures more than going to their actual profiles because signatures just happen to be on the forum page. Even if you're one of those random comment whores, you still hardly ever look at the actual content of the profiles.
"A lot of people have really slow connections, so longer signatures would make their connections even slower!"
Then here's another simple solution: there should be an option so people with slow connections can turn off signatures. That way, they DON'T hold up people's connections.
"Use Tinyurl and Tinypic if you have to!"
Ah, yes. This one's my favorite. I do use both of them in my signature. But I can't do anything, even with them being used. I still won't be able to update my questbar soon enough.
And questbars take up a lot of space. And you can't exactly use tinypic and tinyurl to shorten a questbar, can you? Well, I guess you can Tinyurl the Tektek pricing page, but it makes little difference.
By the way, you can use Tinyurl to shorten a url from tinypic by about 5-ish characters. Moreover, Metamark makes url's 52% shorter than Tinyurl.
"THIS MAKES YOUR GOAL IMPOSSIBLE."
That has absolutely nothing to do with this petition. That is just going on a tangent about the mathematical properties of the number 255. The proposition that the mathematical properties of a number has anything to do with our current signature limit is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard!! rofl I can get on a tangent about the number 600 and it wouldn't mean a thing!
"255 is prime. So it should be our signature limit."
Guess what? 255 is NOT prime. 521 is. Does it mean anything here? No.
"If Gaians are given more wiggle-room, they'll abuse it!"
Well, duh. There will always be people who try to abuse the rules, no matter what they are. Whether our signatures are lowered to twenty characters or brought up to fifteen-hundred characters, there will always those people who try to abuse the rules. It's part of human nature to want to expand your limits. We can't help it. So, whether this petition has any real effect or not, people will ALWAYS try to break the rules.
As long as there are computers, there will be hackers. As long as there are rules, they WILL be broken.
"Pagestretching!11!!one!11! People will pagestretch with longer sigs!"
Read the terms. In bright orange. I won't even bother to say anything more to n00bs who don't read the whole first post. *kills n00bs with a machine gun*
"Don't bash Rina!"
Don't yell at me for that! Those were made by other people! Personally, I can't stand censorship, so why should this be any different?
And maybe Gaia shouldn't make Rina the one saying, "Your signature is too long."
"Well, personally, I find it mean to bash an NPC."
Well, personally, I'm the one in charge of this petition. Not you.
"I don't want to have to give up my ability to view sigs just because your sigs are ridiculously big!"
Well, sucks for you. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes. I'd rather have complete feeling in my arm right now, but I had to sacrifice that to put salt down in the freezing driveway so I don't fall on my a** and kill myself tomorrow.
And our sigs won't be ridiculously big! Anyone who says this without any further backup obviously didn't bother to take five to ten minutes to read the first couple of posts.
"If you're sig is over the byte limit, then OMG use a JPG! It's smaller and almost identical quality."
Not really. Let's take my petition-sigining image, for example. PNG on the left, JPG on the right.
Image Comparison
The JPG quality sucks. And it's only about one KB smaller. Try again.
(And I know I made a typo. Leave me alone!)
"That image is SO fake! You definitely tried to make it look bad!"
No. WRONG. I used average run-of-the-mill software to convert it. Why? Because anyone with half a brain cell can download Irfanview for free. Sure, you can make JPG's look better in Photoshop, but not everyone has it, do they? I don't! It's too expensive for me.
"So why not use The Gimp? That's free, too."
Because it sucks beyond all reason. Its interface is extremely difficult, and hell, it DOESN'T WORK. I've heard people say it's a lot like PSP or something like that. Well, if you're downloading that, chances are you've never used PSP before in your life. So it's not that easy to get used to unless you've already gotten used to more complicated systems.
"If images are more than 500x500px, they'll pagestretch!"
And OMG have you noticed that Gaia CUTS IT OFF if it's more than that? Pagestretching is NOT a problem, as long as that stays the way it is.
I know it only works in firefox, but firefox is a FREE browser, which you can download for FREE here. I find it a lot better than IE7, because IE7 gives me too much login crap here. Games don't load in either browser for me, and I find that firefox goes A LOT faster than IE.
"Don't cuss so dang much!"
Oh, can your abstinent eyes not handle it? People swear. Deal with it. And you DO have the option of filtering out swearing, so don't ******** complain.
(And I know I made a typo. Leave me alone!)
"That image is SO fake! You definitely tried to make it look bad!"
No. WRONG. I used average run-of-the-mill software to convert it. Why? Because anyone with half a brain cell can download Irfanview for free. Sure, you can make JPG's look better in Photoshop, but not everyone has it, do they? I don't! It's too expensive for me.
"So why not use The Gimp? That's free, too."
Because it sucks beyond all reason. Its interface is extremely difficult, and hell, it DOESN'T WORK. I've heard people say it's a lot like PSP or something like that. Well, if you're downloading that, chances are you've never used PSP before in your life. So it's not that easy to get used to unless you've already gotten used to more complicated systems.
"If images are more than 500x500px, they'll pagestretch!"
And OMG have you noticed that Gaia CUTS IT OFF if it's more than that? Pagestretching is NOT a problem, as long as that stays the way it is.
I know it only works in firefox, but firefox is a FREE browser, which you can download for FREE here. I find it a lot better than IE7, because IE7 gives me too much login crap here. Games don't load in either browser for me, and I find that firefox goes A LOT faster than IE.
"Don't cuss so dang much!"
Oh, can your abstinent eyes not handle it? People swear. Deal with it. And you DO have the option of filtering out swearing, so don't ******** complain.
DON'T keep the arguments coming! I have quite enough here already, thank you. My PMs are friends only now.
Or, here's a new idea. Register if necessary and take this IQ test. If your IQ is within 10 points below, equal to, or above mine, you can email me ( khobsessor_NOSPAM_@hotmail.com, remove/emphasis on "_NOSPAM_" wink an argument with a screenshot of your result. If you email me without a proper screenshot or just randomly spam up my inbox, I'll report you to hotmail, then you'll get in trouble with Windows/Microsoft.
Suggestion
If you want to keep your signature for after we get our siggy's back, but need to constantly update something in your siggy, like a questbar, take your current siggy, copy-and-paste it into notepad (or something similar), and save it to your computer, while we deal with our smaller signatures for now.
If you want to keep your signature for after we get our siggy's back, but need to constantly update something in your siggy, like a questbar, take your current siggy, copy-and-paste it into notepad (or something similar), and save it to your computer, while we deal with our smaller signatures for now.
Affiliates:
Want to Affilate with us? The affiliation fee is a mere 50g, please send it to Becs1234, and be sure to specify what the trade is for.
NEW RULE: The fact that you've read this far probably means you're intelligent enough for my attention. My PM's are set to friends only now due to all the spam I get. If you want to affiliate, send an email to khobsessor_NOSPAM_@hotmail.com (remove "_NOSPAM_" wink and fill out the following form. Be sure to put "Y HALO THAR-- affiliate" as the subject.
Gaia name:
Link to page:
Link to banner: (If nothing here, there will be a text link)
Any other comments?
The Shop of SHOCK!
Blueberry Waffle's Avi Art Shop
eYeBaLl hUrTeR; The quizola
NOTE TO SELF: THE ABOVE ONE IS ITS OWN LINE
Want to Affilate with us? The affiliation fee is a mere 50g, please send it to Becs1234, and be sure to specify what the trade is for.
NEW RULE: The fact that you've read this far probably means you're intelligent enough for my attention. My PM's are set to friends only now due to all the spam I get. If you want to affiliate, send an email to khobsessor_NOSPAM_@hotmail.com (remove "_NOSPAM_" wink and fill out the following form. Be sure to put "Y HALO THAR-- affiliate" as the subject.
Gaia name:
Link to page:
Link to banner: (If nothing here, there will be a text link)
Any other comments?
The Shop of SHOCK!
Blueberry Waffle's Avi Art Shop
eYeBaLl hUrTeR; The quizola
NOTE TO SELF: THE ABOVE ONE IS ITS OWN LINE
And one last thing:
By opolong
(from Twighlight Gaze)
(from New York Babii)
