We seemed to have lost :wally and Happy Orthodox Jewish guy ;j . What is going on? Oy!
Well Wally was atroublemaker. He just got **Chowder ** in trouble yesterday.
As far as Happy Orthodox Jewish guy, it is the Sabbath, his day of rest. 
Maybe he will be back in the morning.
Jim {It looks like all of our custom smilies are gone, winkie too}
I hope that means that the PTB are installing a new set.
I used your post to report the problem.
Its a problem?
Sorry, I thought posters were proposing getting rid of them for some time now.
They have been deleted. More trouble than they are worth, I’m afraid.
Just the Jewish guy and Wally have been deleted; all the others should work same as always.
Wink too?
I thought he prevented problems.
Jim
Please explain. Both have been around for years and multiple board upgrades without being removed. Hell, we changed smilies completely once without losing them.
Increasingly over the years – and more so now than at any other time – there’s been discussion over these two smileys. Most of the discussion has been quite negative.
It’s now reached the point where these smileys are being misused. Not sure whether it’s a point of abuse or just someone who is unclear on the process but the staff mentions more and more of this sort of thing.
As has been pointed out in the past, while both smileys are rooted in SDMB history, the board has moved on and changed greatly and use of these images is perhaps not appropriate now.
So they have been removed.
After our next upgrade we’ll open the board to nominations for new smileys. We’re always happy to see your creativity at work and hope the time is not far off when you can have more of what you want in this regard.
Was there going to be some sort of announcement, or was it hoped we just wouldn’t notice?
Ya know… that winking smilie, and the rolleyes are REALLY offensive to me. I think people are talking about me behind my back. You should remove them too.
:rolleyes:
We had planned a major sticky announcement at the head of every Forum, but this thread was started fewer than three minutes after the action was taken and before the announcement could be composed, so we said “To heck with it; we’ll just explain it here.”
We decided to drop the Wally after I had to reprimand the third newbie in four days for employing it against another poster. On the one hand, we discouraged (read: prohibited) its use against other posters because it was a direct personal insult. On the other hand, it was sitting out on the selectable smileys in the Reply window with no way to segregate it or place a notification on it that it could only be employed against other posters when used in the Pit and could only be directed against inanimate objects or non-posting persons outside the Pit.
Given the controversy regarding its eponymous poster and its tendency to get posters in trouble, we decided to dump it now, rather than wait for the next upgrade.
if6was9, the rolleyes is appropriate because we really are talking about you.
Thanks for the explanation. FWIW, I’d still consider (Yet Another) sticky-ing this explanation (or a similar one) at the top of this forum at least, as I imagine you’re likely to get more inquiries as folks notice, probably after the default two days when this thread drops out of view.
Stickies in ATMB are currently under revision; we’ll add this in as well.
Sorry. I just rail when the mob rules. Especially if the mob is the minority. I’ll just hush now.
How was the Happy Orthodox Jew smilie causing problems? Surely nobody with a brain could have found it offensive.
Damn! I actually had a post in mind where the Happy Orthodox Jewish Man would have been appropriate*. Now I’ve lost my chance. 
*And it was even one not discussing spiders eating people headfirst.
I thought maybe the hamsters had their weekend brainfart again. I didn’t know I was a witness to Wally and HOJM sleeping with the fishes. :eek:
Well, I, among others, found it offensive – not in and of itself, but the fact that Jews were singled out for a smiley and no other group. That’s discrimination, in my book. I have said, since day one, if we ahve a Hasidic (hence stereotypical) Jewish smily, then we should also have a black-face smiley, and perhaps an Asian smiley with pig-tail and buck-teeth.