I've just realised that since some time in 2017 the option for our members to view other peoples signatures has been defaulted to "off" and it appears to be a user level setting.

We use signatures quite a bit and would like to have this switched on as the default, is there any way to do this? Or do we have an issue with it being switched off as default?

There is no way in which to switch these on by default. If the user would like to see these, they would actively have to activate these

Ok, can I ask why it's done that way? I think most people wouldn't realise the setting is there unless they are creating their own signature themselves.

It has been that way for about a decade now (since early v4 development), Signatures aren't as an important as they used to be and very often add a lot of clutter.

As a work around though; if you enable the show signatures to guests setting, that preference will be retained into a newly registered account.

 

It has been that way for about a decade now (since early v4 development), Signatures aren't as an important as they used to be and very often add a lot of clutter.

As a work around though; if you enable the show signatures to guests setting, that preference will be retained into a newly registered account.

Will that not result in users abusing signatures to add links for SEO juice as that will make signatures visible to search engines (Show signatures to guests)?

 

Will that not result in users abusing signatures to add links for SEO juice as that will make signatures visible to search engines (Show signatures to guests)?

Our software adds a nofollow tag to all external links, you can also moderate or block links if you so desire in the software. So in theory, people could do that but only just as much as a piece of content.

@Stuart Silvester thank you, I will try that, we don't have guests so didn't have it switched on.

For your information, we have people on our site that are essentially providing a service in return for self promotion to our members. Having a signature visible under their posts is important for them but I understand what you're saying with regards to the clutter.