In the old system signatures became part of the post itself. That is, it was added to the post, if you had 2000 posts, then it was repeated 2000 times in the database. Also, if as you say your users have images in their signatures, when the image no longer exists, is broken, etc., all those posts always showed as broken. You updated your signature but the old one still remained.
This way that doesnt happen. But yes, maybe having an option to display or not would be possible, though it would need an extra call to the database to see if it should display or not, for every single post.
In my opinion, it just seems to me your users are not using signatures appropiately. One or two lines is fine, encourage short signatures, edit those that have medium to big picture sizes... Uff, just visited your boards, mrnocal, no wonder you are requesting this... I certainly wouldnt allow any signature like those that even your moderators have! those are so HUGE I certainly would not call them signatures!
Those are billboards!
