Well we have to look at this situation critically, and not just from a single aspect we have to be open in our perspective before we decide.
First let’s start with those that are allowed to wear a signature in the first place.
Perhaps the allowed signature styling should change with activity score / membergroup. Like:
- Newbie: No styling (including links) allowed. Max 40 characters.
- Jr. Member: Links allowed. Max 100 characters.
- Member: Unlimited length.
- Full: Color allowed.
- Sr. Member: Size allowed
- Hero: Background color allowed
Then newbies will be less effective advertisers, which would hopefully significantly reduce the incentive for low-content posts. And when people become capable of effectively advertising through their signatures, they'll have invested a lot of time into their accounts, and they won't risk being banned by spamming.
From the above post you would see according to rules made by theymos the only people allowed to wear a signature are those ranks above Newbie and to get that you have to have more than one merit and 30 activities.
But in reality and from the many campaigns available now the least rank membership is the Full member, and some are even cutting the full members off that’s how competitive it has been.
So to be eligible for a campaign you have to have reached full member with is 100 and over merit with 120 activities this is not an easy fit to achieve legally excluding bought account and other illegal means.
I would say the availability of signature campaign can be a motivation to ready to many who are learn and improve to even work harder to be eligible for a signature campaign.
But the down side is
relaxing after getting a signature I would be very honest I was guilty of that before I now rediscovered myself, and with the high competition now the downside of relaxing is fast being eliminated because If you relax you get kicked out.
In a broader picture signature campaign has lots of positive sides.
One of the things I believe would help the forum is when the option of buying an account is removed this would encourage hard work.