And, for practically the thousandth time, I’ll say that on message boards with avatars, PEOPLE DON’T TALK ABOUT THEM MUCH. In serious threads, avatars never come up. In lighthearted threads, they’re only mentioned rarely. There also might be the occasional “explain your avatar” thread, much like there are “explain your username” threads.
Would you be so offended that the thread you’ve been following on boil lancing or how many letters of the alphabet you can burp had an off-handed comment about an avatar dropped in? If you’re only reading the threads on string theory, Byzantine emperors, or deconstructing Proust, you won’t see avatar talk.
Also, given the Doper community’s love for geekery and tired memes, we can’t turn off the Monty Python quotes and Hi Opals, which would probably remain far, far more common than a “hey, nice avatar!” comment.
How about this, instead of an avatar, some sort of audio file plays whenever you are composing a post. That way, people will know you are typing, and can clear their schedule accordingly.
I suggest this music plays
It would be particularly good for longer posts, as the music would play for longer as you type, building the tension as us mere mortals wait excitedly to hear what bullshit you are going to spout next.
Another point (which I think I mentioned on both of the aforementioned threads) is that there are other reasons for wanting avatars beyond showing off or attention-seeking.
When you’ve got a debate, like this one, that goes on across several pages with more than a dozen people chipping in, it can be tricky keeping track of what everyone’s said. Pictures would help in this regard.
In fact, to show that I am not interested in showing people my pwitty pictures, I’ll say this:
If avatars are ever enabled, bucketybuck can choose my avatar, if (s)he wishes (with the obvious restrictions that it not be offensive, breach forum rules or clash with an existing avatar).
I think my initial response was, what, four, five words? After all the effort that tibbytoes had clearly put into his post, I felt it deserved at least that much of a response.
And then when asked, I clarified myself. Because I kinda sometimes like being clear, and because I’ll debate fucking anything.
Except for comments about avatars I can’t and don’t want to see. Kind of tough to debate those, on account of the whole not seeing them thing. And I’m not masochistic enough to want to turn those on to be able to see them. So you can see it’s clearly a terrible problem.
I can’t help it that you don’t know how pronouns work. You know, that whole “referring to the most recently referenced noun that makes sense in context” thing. It might be worth looking into; that habit of assuming that pronouns refer to random things throughout history must get annoying.
‘I’m going to be meeting my father this evening; he’s got the night off.’
‘What?? George Washington doesn’t have the night off. Moron.’
The only other 2 boards I regularly visit, other than this one, both allow avatars and I don’t remember any comments about them.
And besides this argument WAY overstating how the occasional comment would disrupt the thread. Speaking of which… I understand why some posters would not want to see avatars as it visually disrupts the experience but how would reading the occasional comment be that big of a deal?
Sorry, I’m just not buying the argument. If you don’t want them, fine. Argue your point all you want. Just don’t base your arguments on reasons that are just not true.
Wait, does “con chinchillas” mean you are against them, in which case you have no problem with people wearing their furry little pelts, or you are against people wearing their furry little pelts?
And does “con chinchillas” make anyone else hungry for Mexican food for lunch?
I owned two chinchillas once. The female liked to show her affection by rearing up and aiming a jet of urine at my eyes, and the male gnawed one of his own feet off.
This really comes down to semantics and context. Would being for fucking anything mean that I had to be in favor of fucking fire hydrants and chainsaws? Would being against fucking anything be a statement in favor of universal abstinence? And is the implied subject of discussion myself, or people in general? I am against myself fucking my mother, but I really have no problem with the fact my father has done so.
As you can see, this is clearly a subject worthy of debate.
Yes, that’s actually a good point. There is an ignore feature, yet the moderators still regularly have to step in and ban people. Why do you suppose that is? If people don’t like their posts they can just not read them, right?
Seven pages long over this. WRT avatars: I have frequented boards that allow avatars, there seems to be a lowest common denominator effect on them: someone always finds it amusing to have an avatar that involves a naked body part, or something that looks like a naked body part, if rules forbid them, and someone always has to have turd avatar, a shitting avatar, a peeing avatar, etc., whatever the epitome of bad taste for them is, they have to have it as their avatar. This applies even on boards where the majority of the avatars are tasteful.
Since someone’s idea of bad taste will INEVITABLY coincide with yours, any board with avatars will repeatedly offend your tastes, whatever they are. Over and over and over again. It’s very much like usernames … someone’s always gotta be Mister Turd, or Pussy McLickLick, or Sir Barfalot, etc. We cannot escape from the onslaught of idiot user names, but we can at least avoid the visual pollution offered by avatars.
You’re going to get slapped because avatars can just be turned off, so one doesn’t have to see the polution. (Just the second-hand pollution of talk about it by persons who do like looking at the pollution.)
Also, I’ve seen an ascii penis get edited out by a mod here. I suspect that the universally-agreed-as bad taste avatars wouldn’t last long either.