Moderator Note
Let’s not have any further discussion of Giraffeboards here. The purpose of the SDMB is not to provide free advertising for other message boards.
Held within reason, avatars can help identify posters (anyone else constantly get silenius and septimus mixed up at a glance? Probably just me) and show off a little personality. Personally, my expectation of the maturity of this forum is that we could definitely do avatars without them being horribly awful. Maybe keep it to 100x100px?
My line would be no animation. I actively avoid fora that have animated avatars. I’d have to turn off avatars entirely if those were allowed.
Addendum: No anime avatars.
No animal avatars??
Does this apply only to Girae or are mentions of places like Reit, Faceb**k, etc., also now disallowed?
Good question. I’d also be curious to hear the answer.
That seems to be the standard on most boards I visit, actually.
And whatever Steam is. People here are always promoting that place.
Steam is a platform, mostly for PC, people use to download and play games. Steam has active discussion and game modding communities.
I get asterion and astorian confused. Luckily, one of them has some text under his/her name (winner of something?) and the other doesn’t.
Please, no avatars. I love the clean look of this place. “Hey, you could always turn them off in your preferences.” Sure, but I almost never view this page logged in – I log in to post and then log out, usually. I don’t like the way it keeps track of your unread posts when you’re logged in.
So, once again, please, no avatars.
Once again, for those in the oblivious seats: AVATARS CAN BE ENABLED AND DISABLED AT THE USER’S PREFERENCE THROUGH THE USER CP. IF YOU DON’T LIKE AVATARS, YOU CAN TURN THEM THE FUCK OFF AND HAVE THE UNSPOILED EXPERIENCE YOU PREFER, WHILE OTHERS CAN SEE THEM OR NOT AS THEY PREFER. There is nothing so irritating as someone who insists that EVERYONE be restricted by their own preferences. Learn to cope with other people having a different preference, it’s not difficult.
So my question was, even though we don’t allow avatars here (yet), is there a place to load one in advance? Or is that also shut off?
Yeah, funny. I guess I need to spell it out that if you need to discuss something pertaining to the rules, you can actually use the real words.
Promotion of other web sites is only allowed here with moderator approval. That applies to Giraffe and any other message board or web site. That’s not a new rule.
While other sites can be mentioned, especially to show examples of things, SmartAleq’s post goes way too far and comes off as an actual advertisement. SmartAleq did not post “look here for an example of avatars” and instead posted this:
These comments (and a couple of others that I didn’t quote) boil down to basically bitching about our rules here and the way we moderate our board, which is far outside of the scope of a thread that is only about avatars:
I have never known a Facebook or Reddit mention to drag an ATMB thread completely off-topic like the mention of Giraffeboards here can, so at the moment I don’t see where any restriction on any other site is necessary. But again, promotion of any other site, Giraffe or otherwise, needs moderator approval.
This is a thread about avatars. Discussion of the way that Giraffeboards is run and how some feel the entire rule system of the SDMB should be changed is way off topic.
Discussions of Steam and other game-related web sites are often permitted in the Game Room, but would be considered spam or promotion of an off-board site in other forums. This is to facilitate the discussion of games and gaming sites, which is part of the purpose of the Game Room.
FYI, we are currently discussing this in the mod loop. It is being considered.
If you do add them, could the default be not to show them? So, when someone visits without logging in, they wouldn’t see them? That is, make it opt-in, not opt-out.
I wonder if the default (which would include those not logged in) could be set to “off”.
I really find avatars make boards easier to read. I’ve never understood why people are so opposed. De gustibus and all that.
I think we are all in agreement that it would be opt-in, not opt-out. The default would be to not show avatars.
Excellent! Thanks.