This is going to be a little more anger, a little less constructive, because I am LIVID.

I got this notification today. "You have received a verbal warning for having an oversized forum image and/or signature. Forum images and signatures cannot exceed 450px in width and 325px in height, COMBINED. This includes all images, links, any text added in your signature, and regardless of images being left or right aligned. Any text added in the signature counts as 10px height per line" Firstly, to be petty, there's no period at the end of the last sentence. More importantly, WTF. I've had the same forum image and signature text for YEARS. I can't even remember when, but I do remember counting everything out when I made/added them to make sure they fit the guidelines.

This is the very last thing I needed today. My husband is deployed for months, over Christmas. I'm trying to juggle kids, work, chores, finances, farm work, holiday crap, multiple self-run businesses, and more. I've been on the verge of a mental breakdown for weeks. Medication isn't helping. Today, 2 days before Christmas, on the anniversary of my grandmother's death, our sweet, beloved, elderly dog passed away in her sleep. I've been near catatonic all day and got on Subeta to escape it all and try to wind down a bit. And I find this notification. After almost 17 years on Subeta, hundreds (at least) spent in game, who knows how many years with the same, carefully created forum decor, to log on and find it wiped and a stupid warning. A very small issue in the grand scheme of things, but just enough to push someone over the edge.

Here's the constructive part, I guess. AT LEAST let us know what the overage was?! As I said, I recall trying to count pixels to make sure everything fit the guidelines. APPARENTLY, I miscalculated way back when. (The forum image was one from SubetaLodge. Looking over it again now, it looks like everything MAY have totaled 5 pixels over the vertical max?!?? 5. P I X E L S.) Include in the "verbal warning" how much combined space our forum decor actually totaled. OR give a 3-day notice, or something, to fix the issue ourselves BEFORE WIPING IT. I didn't have that coding saved anywhere else...and am not going to bother trying to rewrite it.

Off to find a different game to unwind with.

The pixel size thing on the forum signature page doesn’t even work, and the things that affect the total measurement are on different pages. I feel like this could be made better in two ways.

1. Put everything on one page with clear measurements on what your current size is

2. If you violate the size, simply throw an error on the page and don’t let the forum image go through until it’s a size that works. Or automatically resize it.

Idk, I feel like how it currently is is asking for users to get it wrong, get that verbal warning, and get upset.

Adding support to 's ideas. I've also struggled with this.

I'm so sorry that you've been experiencing so many difficult and heartbreaking things at one time . I can relate, and wouldn't wish such overload of grief and struggle on just about anyone.

i don't know what the system looks like on staff's end, whether these clearings go out automatically (in which case i have no idea what causes them to randomly trigger after having a forum image/signature already set for a long time), or if it gets automatically flagged for staff review, or if staff members just have to manually notice it and clear it themselves. regardless, the way it's set up is just shitty.

the fact is, from the user's perspective, you're basically being hit out of nowhere with an aggressively-phrased notification that you've received a warning—saying it's just "verbal" does not lessen the fact that this comes across as an attack—and that your forum image & signature have been cleared, giving you no chance to save anything you had there. it is a truly unnecessarily aggressive and antagonistic system, AND people are set up for failure in the first place because the tool that's supposed to keep track of this does not accurately reflect the actual sizing. (for the love of god, AT LEAST change the phrasing of the notification to be less hostile and accusatory!)

also i think the sizing restrictions are not even sensible to begin with. the username, HA, and post/avatar like buttons already make forum posts a minimum of ~500px tall; pet leashes add even more to this height. right-aligned forum images are limited to 325px of height, which is already quite a bit smaller than the minimum height of any forum post. then if you have a signature, that ostensibly also counts against this 325px limit? even though the forum image is literally NOT ADDING ANY HEIGHT to the post??

and it seems like even staff themselves aren't 100% sure on whether it's "325px max combined height if the forum image is on the top/bottom" or "325px max combined height NO MATTER WHAT, even if the forum image is on the right," so you can set things up this way without any indication that this would be considered an issue and have it like that for years—until BAM, you get slapped in the face with a warning seemingly out of nowhere.

so really what we need is:

1. change the wording of the notification
2. make it so people don't need to GET that notification because surpassing the limitations shouldn't be possible in the first place
3. rework the limitations to be more sensible and clearly defined

And this is why I never have a signature in the first place, aside from holidays. Unclear standards plus a warning (really?) if you get it wrong? Nope, cannot be arsed to bother with it. I'm with the people saying the signature shouldn't even go through at all if it's too big for the requirements.