I don't think we should ever remove signatures from everyone all-together though as it's not fair that spammers will ruin it for everyone else and those will be the people that will immediately leave this board to never return if that happens.
Agree. This forum would become a ghost town overnight if signatures were removed, and I don't think anyone here wants a solution that drastic.
I believe in second chances for the most part, but it worries me what kind of precedent would be set if people started getting lesser consequences for plagiarism or second chances based on rank. Theymos is right, though. Every case should be judged according to the circumstances and context, but that's assuming we really know what the facts are, and you can't really rely on the person who got banned to be completely truthful.
Well the precedent would be 1 per 1000 posts of real plagiarism where there is no sensible explanation like copy and pasting an announcement from exchange regarding that project in that projects thread or some mining guide that a noob asked for. Fair for all. That is also only in retrospect from this point. From now on zero tolerance for real financially motivated plagiarism.
However all this will likely vanish with sigs being deleted from all.
You will have to go futher thought tp stop account sellers if there are no criteria or rules for giving merit, and it is even harder to stop fake ico conversations though.
Years ago I hardly noticed any sig ads and the forum was running very well.