Trolling in Sig Lines?

I know I've been guilty of this in the past, but a user has brought attention to a problem regarding a signature line that takes something he said out of context to paint him in a negative light. His concern is that it could cause work related problems.

So, first fix is that we can view it as trolling outside of the Red Room and require the user to change the line. But longer term, maybe we should consider not allowing quotes of other users in signature lines at all, in order to avoid claims of subjective enforcement of trolling rules.

And yes, I think this person will make that claim.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

I've never been in love with trolling people in their sigs, especially when said trolling could potentially cause real life problems. It's especially problematic when said sig is taken out of context, and selectively edited to make the target poster look like an asshole. Not cool, just my 2 cents.

Agreed. I've never liked the practice either.

Wow, what a bad idea that would be.

If someone has a trollish quote in their sig, just PM them about it and if they refuse to change it, turn off their sig for them.

Seems like a fair compromise.

Well sure, but then that looks a lot like the same thing that led to the gturner shit storm. And I guarantee the person in question would start one. The compromise idea above seems workable.

Didn't the rule used to be something like "you can troll in your signature, but if you do, you can only post in the Red Room"?

Not sure, but that seems propper. It's a big loophole otherwise. @shootER, did you contact the poster in question? I see that the signature remains unchanged.

Sorry, I got busy and forgot about it. I just sent a PM.

I could be wrong, but the sig won't get changed voluntarily. The compromise above may be the best option.

And its always been my understanding that sig trolling was only allowed in the Red Room.

We've had this argument before. Twice, if I'm not mistaken. The first time it was agreed that user status trolling was acceptable as long as the troll didn't post outside of the RR. This in spite of the fact that user statuses were updated across the board. (More like sigs now than before, as you can't not put your sig on a message in XF, unlike vB) This was later applied to signatures, albeit back on vB.

The second time we went with Lanzman's solution. It's worked pretty well, IMO.

Ask first, change rules later.

If we do change the rules, it should be to say sigs must be SFW. I don't see a need to censor quotes specifically.

Curiosity post to see what, aside from the leaping cat, my sig is...

Ah. Robin Williams. RIP

Just going to point out that my sigs have links to the original posts, and I haven't altered anything out of context, other than trimming points down to the relevant comment. Anybody wanting to see the context of said quote can do so easily.

In this particular case, the poster in question did so and placed a link to the original content. But it's still one of those situations that could prove problematic were an employer were to come by the link...and we've all gotten nice and familiar with people in their 30s losing jobs over pictures from Freshman Year spring break in Daytona Beach.