The only reason I used to put the little smiley at the bottom of my posts was to give them something unique for search purposes. I figured that if I put a smiley-with-a-space - because it was somewhat different from a regular smiley - I could run queries on the search and only bring up my own posts (ie. not only those in my recent post history). In theory it was a good idea, but it wasn't until I tried out the search that I found out it wasn't working (I think the parenthesis was being escaped). Oh well... Anyway, they're not really useful on web forums nowadays in contrast to where and when they were - where all you might have was an email address to identify you - email conversations, mailing lists, Usenet, etc... At least, that's a signature in a more traditional sense. Posting links to your blog, favourite quotes, etc... don't really fit that and are more suited to an "about me" section which should really never be displayed in a forum by default IMO.