I propose that, if people want to put links in their signatures, these should only be links to pages elsewhere on the imutual site. My reasoning for this is:
- While many people might have genuine reasons for posting external links, others can exploit this to post unwanted spam (or unsafe external links). It's harder to police external links, to ensure they are safe and welcomed by imutual members, if people are able to put them directly into a signature
- Those with genuine intentions can still achieve the same objective, but creating a post about the external link they want to bring people's attention to, and then linking to that post in their signature. This also allows people to view comments about the link/external site before clicking out to it, as well as providing feedback on it
- People can end up viewing the same links over and over again when reading the forums. Do we really need to, when a simple post about the external site would suffice?
It does also keep open the possibility of allowing 'premium' rights to selected members e.g. those with a certain number of shares, advertisers who want to pay imutual for the privilege
Anyway, those are my thoughts but in the end it's up to you lot
So let's have a poll...
