Take your last post as an example.  Your post takes up the equivalent of 24 lines of text (I lined a text box up next to it using the same sized font and about the same spacing in the text) from your first line of your post to the bottom of your sig.  Your post itself takes up 2 of those lines.  The rest of that is one little space and then your picture.  I know you like the picture, but I think those kind of things should be in someone's profile and need not be posted every time they post.  Sometimes, even with only pics in a sig, it becomes difficult to identify sig from non-sig text when scrolling through if the sig is big enough.  That's why I think an option to disable sigs would be good option.

@ propcrab, there is also quite a lot of space taken up by the profile pic, but there should be some restriction on size, mine is probably too big

Just because you've got a boring signature ;)

@ art of angels, it is from the greatest book ever, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

if it bugs you just use firefox and ad block the image

Dead space is easy to ignore, if anything, the post becomes even more highlighted by it as your eye is attracted to the break in space.  That space is a good reason for having a sig that isn't tiny like mine, however a modest sig with a couple lines and/or a small picture easily eats that space.  Many people's sigs are double or more the size of the space taken up by the avatar and poster stats by themselves.

 If it bothers me too much, I'll post somewhere else.  I'm not that fond of Firefox and don't feel like running 3 browsers on my computer for different pages.  Besides, that doesn't solve the War and Peace in the sig problem.  You can't block the text.  I mention sig view options because many forums have the option.  I believe this forum is a custom code job so its not like an option that just can be flipped on in the forum control panel.  ioi would have to code it.  So, I'm just making a suggestion.  Restricted sig sizes and view options for such are features I like on other forums.

@munkeh - They are great books.  Such a shame Douglas Adams died so young.

What are you talking about?

I thought that the mods. warn you if your sig. was too
big??

I consider a sig too large if it stretches the post past the avatar even when you only type one line.