This is entering discussion so I thought about it and here’s a few things I came up with below…
Pros
- They humanize users and allow people to get to know each other better than they ordinarily would.
- They offer a kind of sanctioned advertising space as a reward for forum participation.
- A good example is allowing someone to advertise Matt’s upcoming 24 hr-charity steam in their sig.
- They promote better networking because a user can sig their skillsets in plain view where-as profiles are rarely read.
Cons
- They’re hyper-repetitive.
- They place off-topic content inline with on-topic content. Similar to ads they need to be consciously skipped over.
- They’re often longer than the post itself even if they’re a single line.
- They’re not intuitive to use in a way that’s at least neutral to the quality of the forum as they’re generally understood to be off-topic and personal. See: machinations of a pain in the ass friction pie.
- Though search engines correct for this, they can interfere with search results if it’s an infrequent poster with keywords that’ll mess with relevant interpretation of the page.