3 ms·

Anyone remembers the forum sig subculture from the early 00s? (sig as in signature)

ceejayoz 4y ago
I remember having to impose a height limit on the forums I helped run.
stoppingin 4y ago
I look back very fondly on this era. In retrospect, it seems like the internet was a much more optimistic, much less cynical place. On a similar note, does anyone else find that new forum software UIs aren't nearly as nice and easy to navigate as the forum software of the early 2000s?
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I find HN to be quite easily navigable.
  - stoppingin 4y ago
    I definitely consider Hacker News to be designed in the style of the old internet.
  - neilv 4y ago
    old.reddit.com and HN are the two best Web forum UIs that I'm familiar with. (threading, scoring, putting message over writer, and minimizing cruft). (Though I used to have much more powerful tools for Usenet and email.)
- no_time 4y ago
  By new forum software, do you mean Discourse? Like: https://forum.openwrt.org/ https://forum.openwrt.org/ It took some getting used to but now I'm actually starting to prefer it to phpbb esque forums. Apart from the terrible space utilization that is.
ejfox 4y ago
I learned photoshop for the first time to make signatures for my forum buddies, little did I know I was setting the path of my entire life...
tyingq 4y ago
There was an earlier ascii sig subculture on Usenet.
incanus77 4y ago
I place this to the mid-90s at least, probably from Usenet. I adhered strictly to the rules, which were: - Begin signature with -- following be a space and carriage return - Have up to four lines of text following that - Figlet/ASCII art was allowed I don't recall what imagery I had, but a few different lines that I had for a long while were: - Of all the things I've lost, I miss my pants the most. - In the beginning was nothing, which exploded. - I beat the Internet. The last boss is really hard.
- neilv 4y ago
  In a Usenet sigs, it wasn't unusual to see a phone number, DoD number, or a statement that one is speaking only personally and not for their employer. More than one person had "ICBM coordinates" in their sig. It was a different time. One thing I'm glad has gone away is signatures that include a quote from someone famous (or net.famous), along with attribution. I'd skim a post, see the name of a person at the bottom, and associate that identity with that name, sometimes more than the name of the poster. At one point I was doing email and Usenet in Emacs, I wrote a feature to deemphasize sigs: https://www.neilvandyke.org/sigbegone/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/sigbegone/
leetbulb 4y ago
The sig community contributed heavily toward my career path. I learned a ton of things due to sigs from hosting and developing plugins for PHP forums, web design, working with relatively advanced Photoshop techniques, basics of various 3D modeling applications, etc. I still have some of my old sigs somewhere and they're pretty awesome little artifacts from my youth.
npteljes 4y ago
I hated it on traditional forums, where it inevitably got to the point where the comment was "meh, i dunno" and then the person's signature was 150px high, and the forum engine only display 10 of these at a time. Minimal interfaces with quality indicators like Hacker News or old Reddit are so much more useful, and the sub-threads are much more visible because of the tree structure.
bearmode 4y ago
This was where I found my passion for graphic design. Making signatures and userbars in a cracked version of Photoshop started me on a journey that included me getting my degree in GD, working for major international clients, starting my own business, returning to an inhouse position, and then leaving the field after 5 years to get paid 25% more as an entry-level web dev with no relevant qualifications.

I remember having to impose a height limit on the forums I helped run.

I look back very fondly on this era. In retrospect, it seems like the internet was a much more optimistic, much less cynical place. On a similar note, does anyone else find that new forum software UIs aren't nearly as nice and easy to navigate as the forum software of the early 2000s?

Aeolun 4y ago
I find HN to be quite easily navigable.
- stoppingin 4y ago
  I definitely consider Hacker News to be designed in the style of the old internet.
- neilv 4y ago
  old.reddit.com and HN are the two best Web forum UIs that I'm familiar with. (threading, scoring, putting message over writer, and minimizing cruft). (Though I used to have much more powerful tools for Usenet and email.)
no_time 4y ago
By new forum software, do you mean Discourse? Like: https://forum.openwrt.org/ https://forum.openwrt.org/ It took some getting used to but now I'm actually starting to prefer it to phpbb esque forums. Apart from the terrible space utilization that is.

ejfox 4y ago

I learned photoshop for the first time to make signatures for my forum buddies, little did I know I was setting the path of my entire life...

tyingq 4y ago

There was an earlier ascii sig subculture on Usenet.

incanus77 4y ago

I place this to the mid-90s at least, probably from Usenet. I adhered strictly to the rules, which were: - Begin signature with -- following be a space and carriage return - Have up to four lines of text following that - Figlet/ASCII art was allowed I don't recall what imagery I had, but a few different lines that I had for a long while were: - Of all the things I've lost, I miss my pants the most. - In the beginning was nothing, which exploded. - I beat the Internet. The last boss is really hard.

neilv 4y ago
In a Usenet sigs, it wasn't unusual to see a phone number, DoD number, or a statement that one is speaking only personally and not for their employer. More than one person had "ICBM coordinates" in their sig. It was a different time. One thing I'm glad has gone away is signatures that include a quote from someone famous (or net.famous), along with attribution. I'd skim a post, see the name of a person at the bottom, and associate that identity with that name, sometimes more than the name of the poster. At one point I was doing email and Usenet in Emacs, I wrote a feature to deemphasize sigs: https://www.neilvandyke.org/sigbegone/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/sigbegone/

leetbulb 4y ago

The sig community contributed heavily toward my career path. I learned a ton of things due to sigs from hosting and developing plugins for PHP forums, web design, working with relatively advanced Photoshop techniques, basics of various 3D modeling applications, etc. I still have some of my old sigs somewhere and they're pretty awesome little artifacts from my youth.

npteljes 4y ago

I hated it on traditional forums, where it inevitably got to the point where the comment was "meh, i dunno" and then the person's signature was 150px high, and the forum engine only display 10 of these at a time. Minimal interfaces with quality indicators like Hacker News or old Reddit are so much more useful, and the sub-threads are much more visible because of the tree structure.

bearmode 4y ago

This was where I found my passion for graphic design. Making signatures and userbars in a cracked version of Photoshop started me on a journey that included me getting my degree in GD, working for major international clients, starting my own business, returning to an inhouse position, and then leaving the field after 5 years to get paid 25% more as an entry-level web dev with no relevant qualifications.