Okay, honest question. Is there any opinion against avatars you consider to be valid? And if not…why bother asking “why don’t you want avatars?” Because really, if no opinion is valid except those that agree with you, there’s not much point to answering your question. It’s like getting mad at someone because they like the color green. It’s a preference.
Do you understand how pathetic it is to worry about the 100K of data that a full 50 unique avatars per page would take? Also, the fact that cache’ing of repeatedly used avatars would make it even less burdensome?
Claims were made. I was wondering what they were based on and if they can support said claims.
Ah, and I thought you were being obnoxious. I apologize. Let’s see.
Opinion & preference, followed by a question. Which you answered with another question:
So she* thinks avatars are vapid. So what? Why not just answer her question? It’s a valid one. What advantages do avatars provide? Do you have anything to support the claim that we should have them, other than preference?
*I apologize, Absolute, if I am guessing gender wrong. I usually do, so I went opposite my gut instinct and went with female.
I’ve already said that Avatars are a bad idea, and that I personally hate them, but those of you arguing that it will hurt performance don’t know what you’re talking about. For one thing, do you have any evidence whatsoever that the performance issues with the SDMB have to do with bandwidth? I’m guessing they don’t, since searches take a long time and while the board is searching it isn’t using bandwidth at all. I’m guessing the performance issues have more to do with bottlenecks at the data layer, but I don’t know either, since I’m not an expert in vBulletin architecture.
Adding avatars to the database may or may not slow performance. For all I know, the database already queries for avatars, and they’re only filtered out at the web server before the page is sent. But again, I don’t know for sure. My guess is that turning avatars on and off has a negligible impact on performance.
My main gripe is usability. That’s what I do for a living, btw. I’m a usability engineer. Avatars are fine if the board is like a game or a social network. If you come here to see what your friends are up to, share funny images of yourself with them, etc., then Avatars are fine. But if you come here to read content, Avatars are just visual noise. They increase the amount of scrolling you must do when reading. They clutter up the screen. They change a board from one that reads like a book into one that reads like a graphic novel.
Also, my guess is that the more serious look of this board helps keep away the kiddies and the people who just want to chat. And on the flipside, the serious intellectuals looking for a place to debate might be turned off by pages of cartoons and cute pictures of dogs and such. So I think it may well skew the demographic of the board over time, and not for the better.
I like avatars on boards where they are size-restricted and not permitted to be animated. As others have said, it helps me tell posters apart.
I do not really care deeply about this issue and have no desire to debate it at length, but just wanted to throw in my opinion for what it’s worth.
Should’ve stuck with your gut - I’m a guy.
Reading this long rehash of an already-much-rehashed topic, I can’t help but think that if board is going to take a shot at enabling avatars, the only way it’s going to work is if they don’t ask first. Every time the subject is raised, it generates several pages of opinions and predictions, and this is just hypothetical. If an admin ever posted “we’re thinking about it for real, what say you,” the accumulated weight of the resulting gnashfest would suck the rest of the board into it, singularity style.
So, despite not being a huge fan of the idea myself, at least not without significant caveats (mentioned a couple of pages ago), I would nevertheless suggest that, if the board’s going to go for it, the predictable debate (it’s wrong, it’s not our mission, it’ll attract a bad crowd, I’ll leave, but you can turn them off, it’s not that much bandwidth, blah blah blah) should be short-circuited, and the functionality should just be turned on without preamble. One day, we come to the board, and avatars work. Period. Yank off the Band-Aid. If they’re gonna do it, they should do it that way.
You have an excellent point, Cervaise. Just turning on avatars (call it a “30-day experiment”) would remove all of the hypotheticals and let us actually see what happened. All the guesses would be replaced by reality. We’d actually be able to see if there was an effect on performance, and measure whether we had to do more scrolling, and so forth.
And speaking of numbers:
I assume your 2K per avatar is a verifiable statistic from somewhere, so I’ll just go with it. Just to add a hard number here, page 4 of this thread is a total of 433K, including text, images, Google ads, scripts (100K of scripts!), and style sheet.
That’s a 23% increase, 50 posts per page–higher if you view fewer posts per page, lower if you view more.
Well, it’s not a “verifiable statistic”. The vB software gives the admins the ability to set both pixel and byte size limits on avatars. A 65X65 pixel avatar is generally going to be under 2K but a limit on the file size could also be set to enforce it.
My comment on it being a pathetic worry comes from the absolute numbers, regardless of what the percentage increase it would be. When the server is running right, it takes me less than a second to download a page here. The 25% increase might bring me all the way up to that full second.
No.
Because I’m cranky.
Get off my lawn.
Damn kids.
Correct. The vBulletin admin control panel lets board operators control avatar file size, dimensions, and animation (permitted or prohibited). Some seem to be assuming that, worst case scenario, posts from 50 different people, all with maximum sized avatars, appear on a page. In reality, a page with 50 posts may include contributions from far fewer users. Not all avatars will be the maximum file size, and not all users wil have avatars, even if given the option.
To address a couple other issues:
“People will be changing their avatars all the time, and it’ll be confusing.” Only partially true. Based on the experience on my board, new users will often try a few avatars on for size, but later settle on one that they’ll keep for a long time. They may change their avatar for a week or two, if their favorite sports team makes the playoffs, or to honor some other special event or occasion, after which they’ll return to their normal avatar…
I still don’t understand the fear of avatars. The SDMB community prides itself on “fighting ignorance,” but it seems it holds a great fear of the unknown. For a community that is supposedly quite progressive and open-minded, it often seems like one of the stodgiest, most conservative places online, a place where the prospect of change is usually met with howls of protest rather than the anticipation of new possibilities.
Here’s what will happen when avatars are introduced:
- There will be several threads from old-timers in ATMB, protesting, threatening to leave, and demanding to know how to turn them off.
- Many users will upload avatars, and experiment with different images before they settle on one they they’ll stick with.
- The worst-case scenario so many predict: avatars of Hitler and other offensive images, an influx of teenagers, C&D orders from Fox because someone has an avatar picturing the Comic Book Guy, a change in the “tone” of the board to one resembling a gamer clan or teen site, a decreased amount of more intellectual posts, an increased amount of one-line posts in textspeak … just as on every other board that has permitted avatars, none of that will happen.
- Months later, even some that were vehemently against avatars when the idea was first being throw around will be seen with avatars. When asked about their earlier opposition, they’ll claim they were always in favor of avatars, but just being “devil’s advocates.”
Straw man. No one has expressed a fear of avatars. We hates them, but we doesn’t fear them.
People have said that avatars will lead to a dumbing down and lowering the standards of conversation around here. That’s not just hating them.
Nor is it fearing them.
I don’t think elmwood is accusing anyone of being in a fear induced coma. I think saying “some Dopers fear that avatars will ruin the intellectual character of the place” is not a “straw man” and in line with what he likely meant.
I wish I shared your experience. Today’s a pretty typical day. I just loaded a bunch of SDMB pages and timed them. The best was just over 3 sec. The worst was just shy of 8 sec.
I can read what he said:
This is a much broader indictment of the membership here, which is unfounded and gratuitous. I am simply expressing my preferences, and **elmwood ** has blown it into some paralyzing phobia of progress. I reject that.
Another no.
I have no problem with avatars and allow them on my discussion board. I do monitor them closely and have had no problems.
That said, I see no need for them here.