It also doesn’t take a huge amount of elitist, arrogant, smug posters who react with kneejerk conservatism to any hint of change and who promote themselves as smarter than average to drag down a forum. This conversation about avatars is illustrative. People actually think posting here is a status symbol. It’s hilarious.
For me it’s a time thing.
If a page has avatars, I can scan for the posts of particular posters quicker. This makes it easier to find posts that I want to read, and to skip posts that I do not want to read.
When my high-speed connection is having a bad day (I live in the boonies at the end of the line), avatars cause a page to take longer to load.
In finding a balance between download time and visual scanning time, my internet connection has improved enough over the last year that now I would prefer avatars (provided the don’t move, blink or make noise – all of which are distracting), whereas previously, I did not prefer avatars.
Sorted. Next thread… 
Ignoring for the moment your hyperbole and strawman-building (“status symbol,” really?), you provide yet another baffling example of a poster whose opinion of this board appears to range from indifference to sneering contempt, and yet— here you remain, day after day, as if unable to tear yourself away. If nothing about this board sets it apart from the others (except what you see as lofty and unsupported claims of intellectualism), why waste your precious time here at all, let alone advocate so strenuously for a feature you can already enjoy on innumerable other discussion boards that are surely more worthy of your presence?
“Smarter than average” is elitist now? Damn, that bar just keeps dropping lower every day.
I far prefer video-conferencing to tele-conferencing. I find with video-conferencing it is easier to keep track of who is who, and it is easier to spot when someone has something to say, or when someone has paused but has not finished speaking.
On one video-conference when I was making submissions to a panel of judges, the video froze while the audio continued. I found that a little distracting, and had to spend a tad more time keeping track of which judge was firing which questions at me. The next time I have to appear before that panel, I will check to see if they have upgraded their system, for if they have not, I’d rather take a long flight there and back to be able to communicate face to face, than to be stuck with only audio.
No, no, no, you don’t understand. If people watch Kindergarten Cop then they might talk about it and then I won’t know what they’re talking about and I will become ENRAGED because now I’m not part of a conversation about something I have no interest in.
Jesus Christ. Try to keep up.
So, there’s one person who’s said that they will occasionally change their avatar. The horror. The horror. Clearly, all of us who’ve said we’d like them because it would make it easier for us to identify people are just lying.
We’re in the Pit, you moron. Since we’re taking ownership of subforums, *my *fucking Pit.
Are you really that thick? I MEAN THE PERSON’S HEAD, RETARD. Not some picture on their nametag, which would be ridiculous and redundant.
So what? The point is to have something to identify them by that’s visual versus verbal. It doesn’t matter if I can’t see how fat they are or how terrible their haircut is.
Oh, good, then you approve of enabling avatars, since their display will be disabled by default.
Reminder: YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT IF YOU THINK THAT’S AN AVATAR.
Wait… Your complaint is now that if we enable people to upload avatars if they so choose, and enable the rest of us to display said avatars if they so choose, you WON’T BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN A CONVERSATION THAT YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYWAY?
Wow. I… just… Wow.
There are so many more, better objections to that film than the casting.
I think we should allow avatars but they should only be pictures of cats.
Do they have to be your own cats or can they be someone else’s? And are captions required, encouraged, or disallowed?
I’ve heard that argument in previous avatar threads. I call it the “golden eye argument” - that avatars will cause some very subtle and esoteric changes to people’s posts that will no doubt be negative given the rarefied perceptions of those with the golden eye. They’re like audiophiles who claim that the ultra-high end speaker cables with the red insulation have a “shallower soundstage” than the identical cables with the blue insulation, even though 99.99% of all listeners and the most expensive text equipment can’t find or measure a difference.
So, let’s take the kind of thread our golden eyes say defines the SDMB - something like this. How would a thread like this change with avatars, even if they’re unmentioned in the thread?
Also, do the people that think the “intellectualism” of the SDMB would suffer with avatars know that such threads only make up a very small minority of all the threads on the site? Let’s compare:
http://www.google.com/search?q=“postmodern”+site:boards.straightdope.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=“pimples”+site:boards.straightdope.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=“sartre”+site:boards.straightdope.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=“lady+gaga”+site:boards.straightdope.com
OMG! Look at the mental midgets with the avatars and their lulz-filled verbal diarrhea on this message board. And this message board, too! And this forum! And this board! If we allow avatars, we’ll become just as bad as this site!
The problem here is that we’re assuming people who don’t want avatars have any logical objection. Which they don’t. As the saying goes, you can’t argue out what wasn’t argued in. They have a completely irrational dislike of avatars, so they think that no one else should be allowed to have them, even though they can’t give you a good reason why, nor can then explain how it will have any negative impact on them since they can leave the damned things turned off and refuse to upload one of their own.
Thanks. It’s reassuring to know that if the Avatar Rebellion on this board fails, there are other venues where I can discuss rationalism and free thought with Captain Crunch and Animal from The Muppet Show.
Any cats, captioned or not. I don’t want to be a Nazi about it.
Except, no cutesy trying to get by the rules by posting Meerkats 'cause it has “kats” in the name or performers from “Cats”, the musical. Just cats of the actual feline variety.
STOP OPPRESSING ME, NAZI!
No!
Nazi was actually my nickname in grade school.*
[sub]*Seriously, I was always getting called a Nazi because of my German last name and because kids are stupid.[/sub]
The only reason all the intellectual types are here instead of there is the avatars. Avatars are to smart people as garlic is to vampires.
I think we should allow avatars, but only of actual gods, in keeping with our lofty self image and Rain-Man-like literalism.
Only “actual gods”? Kind of hard when they’re all made up, i’n’it. Is there some base number of required believers we’re going to use to determine which ones are “actual”?
Oh, nice discussion on BAUT Forums. I really enjoyed reading that one, thanks.