: Should forum signatures be statically stored with the post? I have seen forums do this both ways in the past, but I thought it might warrant a wider discussion. My question is, when a user

@Angela700

Let it change dynamically, i've seen ridiculous content in people signatures. Not spam just links to their own sites and sometimes one too many smiley graphics. It'd be a cleaner site if you let them change dynamically so you have more control over them in the future than having to figure out a way to clean them up from posts they were appended to.

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@Ogunnowo487

I don't think the signature should be stored with the post, it should only be appended at the time of display.


Some users do not like to see the signature and many forums allow this to be turned off for display. The signature in forum posts is generally unnecessary since the user who made the post should be identified by other means and it just takes up extra space.
Some users post links / contact info in their signatures and this should be globally updated if necessary.
An email is a contained piece of static information so the signature provides additional information. In a forum, that additional information is usually available from the users profile. This is why custom signatures are not allowed on the Stack Exchange sites.

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