Signature guidelines updated, Google search engine added

[Alexander Turcic]

Updated Signature Guidelines

You know those commercials that shout at you to "Buy! Buy! Buy!" their product? With those annoying flashing lights and HUGE dancing slogans? Right! The ones you mute, skip over, or go into the kitchen until they're over. The commercials you hate!

<- click to see what's obviously a nono.

Well, we at MobileRead are trying to prevent members from having to put up with this kind of annoyance while they are reading posts in the forums, or just skimming through the day's news.

Lately, in their well earned pride over having published a book, or having a product to sell, ... well, some folk have become just a little too exuberant in their signatures. So the Green Team got together and tried to come up with some common sense guidelines for signatures to guarantee that browsing MobileRead can be enjoyed as much as possible.

Please take a moment to read the updated guidelines on signatures and ensure that your signature complies with them.

Google-powered Search Engine

In an effort to make MobileRead search results more relevant we have added a second search engine - powered by Google. You can try it by clicking on "Search" in the blue navigation bar (top of the screen) and entering your search term in the second input box.



You can also make Google your default search engine if you prefer: Under options in your control panel browse near the bottom where it says "Search Engine", select "Google" and save.



The basic search syntax is the same as you're used from Google. E.g.:

• Use "quotation marks" to surround phrases, making sure that the words you search for are found together
• Use a hyphen immediately before a word or phrase to exclude it, e.g. -word
• Use OR between words or phrases if you are looking for items which have either. The OR applies only to the word/phrase on either side, e.g. black cat OR kitten will find items that include cat and also contain either cat or kitten
• An asterisk (*) can be used inside a phrase as a wildcard word, e.g. "I like * in the morning" will match I like coffee in the morning and I like tea in the morning, among others.
• Use intitle:cheese to find cheese only within titles

[Javed]

This is an excellent idea to incorporate Google custom search into the search features.
This will be very useful. Thank you.

[Alexander Turcic]

Thanks Javed.

Opinions and suggestions are always welcomed.

[Fbone]

Do these "book/page count" graphics (like mine) violate the updated guidelines?

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Do these "book/page count" graphics (like mine) violate the updated guidelines?

They are OK.

A discreet, non-animated graphic is acceptable. If you include content hosted at another site and if that content is slowing down the browsing experience at MobileRead, we will ask you to remove that content.

What it comes down to is that we suggest graphics to remain discreet, and more importantly, that the signature is not abused for an abundance of advertisement.

[Mike L]

The new guidelines on signatures should be a big improvement. Thank you.

[kennyc]

Thanks.

[GeoffC]

Thanks.

[kennyc]

Copy cat.

[GeoffC]

Echo.

[silasgreenback]

I like the signature guidelines. (I'm glad all of our tickers are kosher at 73 x 420.)

There's a certain Kindle-centric forum that I have trouble with because of all the authors beating me over the head with their signature adverts.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by silasgreenback

I like the signature guidelines. (I'm glad all of our tickers are kosher at 73 x 420.)

They are. What's not permitted is to have the ticker AND half a dozen lines of text.

[ATDrake]

on both updates.

I don't suppose there could be a clause added to the signature guidelines, about not editing a faux-signature into the bottom of posts, which is very annoying for those of us who have actual signatures turned off?

If I'd wanted to know that someone's penname was X and they were the author of such-and-such books, available to buy at Amazon for only 99 cents via these convenient links every time I saw a post from that poster, I'd have sigs turned on.

[Worldwalker]

/agree with ATDrake.

I haven't disabled .sigs, but I want the option to remain for me to be able to do so. Perhaps more to the point, when I see someone has taken steps to override my preference for seeing their personal advertising or not, I react to them about as well as I do to spammers who send emails purporting to be from friends or colleagues.

[JonB]

Great idea to clarify the signatures. Now, how about zapping those silly animated smilies? Surely this is the most annoying one :



Adding Google search was a great idea!