To all the nays, you can turn avatar display off in vBulletin. Why let your preferences stop those more visual thinkers who would prefer to include reasonably sized, tasteful, non-animated avatars in their profiles? As for the IP issues, there’s a concept called fair use. Look it up. I’ve looked for incidents in the past, and could not find any case where a message board has been sued because some user had some Bart Simpson or Calvin avatar.
Plenty of people don’t like game threads. Does that mean there should be no Game Room forum? I’ve met many that don’t like the mindlessness and immaturity of the less intellectual off-topic chatter on the SDMB. Does that mean MPSIMS should go? Did the sky fall, as many predicted, when a five minute edit window was introduced?
Seriously, when it comes to the online incarnation of NIMBYism, I’ve never seen it more prevalent anywhere than on the SDMB. Members of the SDMB see the possibility of new features much in the same way that residents of a quaint village in Vermont view a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the edge of town. I would bet many Dopers would be clamoring to revert to vBulletin 1.0, UBB.classic, or even some ancient message board system like WWWBoard if it was technically possible.
I agree with those who are ok with small non-animated avatars. As mentioned people who don’t like 'em can turn 'em off in their preferences. Heck, the powers that be can go the other way and make it so they’re off by default and you’d have to change a setting to be able to see them.
Another Nay here. The unique lack of visual clutter was one of the things that initially attracted me to this board and got me to sign up. If it happens I can’t stop it, but that’s my opinion.
Aww, all you nay-sayers are just sticks in the mud. Imagine this place coming to life with all of the in-jokes visualized in a 100x100 pixel square. Why, it’d be an art form in and of itself.
For the nay-sayers:
If the board software provides the option to turn off the display of avatars (current vBulletin software allows you to turn off signitures, avatar images, and images), do you still object to them?
Yes I still object. I’d like the same experience, as far as possible, when I read a post, as anyone else reading that post. That’s why I don’t turn smilies off, even though I don’t like them and would never use one.
I like a standardized look. I don’t really like this font but use it because it’s pretty much universal on this board and contributes to its overall uniform appearance, which is clean, unique on the internet, and appealing to me.
Not to mention what we could do in 100 x 100 pixels with a squid.
I’m not against avitars but not for them either. They are visually distracting and unnecessarily bandwidth consuming. They do offer a quick visual identification and a reference for cross associating a poster with a particular train of thought or ideas but the trade off is unwitty annoyances and gaudy (possibly NSFW) festoons.
And I’ve been in the corrugated box business for 15 years so trust me, I know gaudy festoons* when I see them.
As long as they can be turned off like the sig lines then they would not bother most people but I can’t say they would be an improvement either.
*In corrugated paper a festoon is a single-faced combination of liner and medium that is ran ahead of the outside liner and gathered in a billowy pile so a variety of outside liners can be glued on and the double backer speed can be adjusted appropriately without really affecting the single facer speed producing the festoons. A gaudy one would have the wrong size medium so that the edges stick over the liner looking like cheap fringe, also getting adhesive (starch) all over the rollers and belts in the process.
Absolutely. The servers are slow enough as it is (it just took me 7 minutes and a dozen or more dropped connections to even be able to get onto this thread!) without having to serve up thousands of animated gifs of “hilarious” kittens or stormtroopers doing pelvic thrusts.
Nay. In the world of online message boards, outside of the SDMB lies a sea of crap. I’m against anything that makes the SDMB more like the others. The crappy ones.
Avatars on other message boards which tend to have threads with frequent short posts are ok. For example, a sports board which has a 20 page thread discussing a game going on then. Most of the posts are brief comments on a play. Seeing the avatar lets me quickly associate the response with the member.
The SDMB is different. Most threads and responses are of greater length. There is a lot reading of the posts rather than just a quick scan.
Why can’t the village choose whether to have a WalMart on the edge of town or not? One of the attractions of the SDMB is that it’s text based – though you can link to images and even to YouTube videos if you want – and that has an effect on the place. If you don’t like the Vermont village, no one is stopping you from moving to Boston or Manhattan, if that’s what turns you on.
(In other words, another vote for no avatars here – though I have used avatars on other sites where they work well).
I think you should implement small non-animated avatars regardless of what the “consensus” is in threads like this. If you want to attract new users you shouldn’t keep this site looking so backwards just to satisfy some hard core haters. Also, as I said in the last discussion on this, most of the people who hate them and “have never seen them implemented well” need to look around a bit more. There are plenty of examples of simple avatars not cluttering the page, adding to page length or making everything look gaudy.
Opalcat has even smaller ones on her site but I’m not sure it sneaks under the “not gaudy” line.
eta: Giles, this isn’t a village. It’s a business. The owners get to decide whether there is a Walmart, just like they decided to go pay, stick in tonnes of ads, add a 5 minute delay to searching, etc, etc.
