Advertising in Signatures & Posts

Where do you draw the line on your forum? What kind of rules do you have in regard to Advertising in Signatures & Posts ?

I allow advertising in signatures (exept pr0n and warez) but not in posts or threads :)

Same here, if you contribute and sell, you can hawk your product in your sig with a link. If your only two posts are ads for your products, you and the posts are gone.

Being that alot of my members are racers, of course they are going to have different shops or vendors in their sig that sponsor them. However, there is a difference between having

Sponsored by:
www.gofastparts.com

and

Tires on special for $100!
Visit: www.gofastparts.com

I dont allow the latter. Only paying vendors get that priviledge

Makes sense to me

We have had a lot of issues with members advertising in their signatures and have implemented a detailed set of rules to control this...

5. Signature and Profile: Ensure that your signature and/or profile falls withing the following guidelines:(a) Signature Rules:
* 300 character limit (no change)
* A maximum of two weblinks (must be within the character limit obviously)
* No blatant advertising (refer to rules on Classified and Professional adverts below)
* No smileys
* No images
* No animations
* A maximum of 2 colours
* Maximum font size of 2pt
(b) Does not contain links to inappropriate www sites - a ban may be enforced if this is not adhered to
(c) Does not contain links to unauthorised or unapproved content from other www sites - this is considered bandwidth theft and tMP does not support such activity. You will be asked to remove or amend your avatar if this is spotted. Refusal to do so will involve further action.
(d) Profile picture must not contain excessively large images or annoying animations; 15K Maximum file size.
(e) Follows all the rules applying to posts themselves.
(f) Signatures are not to be used for blatant advertising. Weblinks and information are allowed (as long as they fall within the current guidelines for signatures), but the use of signatures will be monitored and action will be taken if we think they are being mis-used.


If this is continually flouted, I add them to a usergroup that I have coded a conditional around the show signature part of postbit that won't then show theirs.

If this is continually flouted, I add them to a usergroup that I have coded a conditional around the show signature part of postbit that won't then show theirs.


Why would you just not move them to a usergroup - and turn off the signature option for that usergroup, instead of coding the conditional?

Simple.... cos I am stupid...:) heheheh didn't think of that.

ROFL! Ok- cant fault you for honesty!

I have allowed Advertising in signatures at my teen-hut.net forums.

I think at least this much should be allowed.
Advertising in posts is not allowed but siggies allowed!
Most of them wants to do this to promote their forum but very rare cases siggy advertising works!

my members don't do this to much, I have small sites but I do have nofollows on all outgoing site links, and Sig's are hidden from guest..

if a user has 10 post, they can show their site as far as I'm concerned on my sites,

Well, Thats a different case!

Most of the forums allow guests to see the signature and that is why siggy advertising works!
Google also crawls!
That really helps.

yup, but it also adds all kinds of keywords and anchor text to My site, I do it to help with SEO :)

In one forum that I joined, we can only post a link to our signature if we reach a senior member status (when we get 100 posts). This can be considered if advertising is going to be monitored and controlled in signatures.