[DMcCunney]

I started in on line messaging in the 80's, when you generally did so by calling a BBS with a dial up modem, and posting in forums the BBS maintained. BBSes began to aggregate into networks, which passed traffic around, and I found myself moderating ten conferences on what was then the second largest BBS network in the world after Fidonet, with just under a thousand nodes worldwide.

Signatures were a thorny issue, as the Sysops running the BBSes passed traffic around by dialup modem at long distance rates, and looked unhappily at traffic that wasn't actual message, because they paid the freight on the transfers. Message traffic was transferred as compressed Zip archives, but extravagant signatures could drive file sizes up fast. The network I moderated for had a "two line signature, max" rule for that reason.

Websites like MR don't have that constraint, but courtesy is still recommended. When you use a signature, you need to think about why you are adding it, and what you are trying to say. You may think your "all singing, all dancing" big fancy animated signature is really neat, but will the other people on MR agree, or will they rapidly grow tired of seeing it?

Personally, I think "less is more". Keep it to a couple of lines. Embed a link to your website, blog, or whatever. Don't use tags to embed fancy colors or boost the font size. It should be unobtrusive, readable if other folks want to and ignorable if not. If a message you post is one quoted line from another post, one line of reply, and a signature that takes up two thirds of the screen, you are arguably overdoing it, and will simply annoy other readers.

The tickers in themselves aren't a problem. It's when they get combined with other large signature elements that they become the straw that broke the camel's back.
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Dennis