People can already turn off signatures but he's making an argument that they lower the quality of discussion, which you can't really turn off unless you start blocking people.
Also, you can turn off ads and avatars which is nice. Signatures provide the site with a lot of adspace banner views which I think theymos wants to keep (as would be expected), even if there is spam.
The advertisement theymos sells are not placed in signatures. Are they? If signatures were removed those ads he auctions off every month would be more valuable IMO.
No, they aren't. You are probably right but signatures are valuable and in almost all forum, it is available. Signatures are good to publicize
our business or to spread any messages. I think, like hilariousandco said, all signature campaigns should be banned rather than ditching signature.
-MZ
I would ban signature ad spammers and other abuser than banning signature campaigns. A spammer or an abuser produce degrade by itself the quality of discussions; so, I think only solution is to have a zero-tolerance enforcement of forum rules against any violator anywhere on the forum.