Finding one (1) example of a “family” of forums that was spammed with icky pics does not constitute an overwhelming trend. I’ve been on dozens of message-boards that allowed avatars (this is actually the only one I know that doesn’t) including one I help admin, and I’ve seen maybe, maybe ten inappropriate avatars in the decade+ I’ve been doing it.
Your logic seems to be: one example proves some sort of point. By that reasoning, since a bank failed once, it makes sense to keep all your assets hidden in your sock drawer.
“The one time the site gave a sliver of a chance for it to happen, it happened.”
“Well, it’d never happen again.”
“comments that included images and 'gifs, and the sites are flooded with replies embedded with violent rape** images**, all kinds of nasty porn, images of aborted fetuses, beheadings, racist images, and dead cats, among other things.”
“But you used the letters gif!!! That supersedes any other words in your post! .gifs! It’s all about .gifs! Because I said so!!!”
And said offensive avatar wasn’t exactly goatsec or two-girls-one-cup, either. (An animated close-up of a pair of breasts bouncing. And said breasts were in a bikini. Obnoxious and crass, but not out and out disgusting)
I believe a long time ago, years before I’d even heard of the SDMB, there was a brief period where images were postable and someone posted tubgirl, I think it was. Or maybe goatse. Anyway, it was a one time thing but it scurred the pants off the administration. If they don’t want to turn on images because they don’t want to ever have to risk seeing one instance of lemonparty, that’s their business and I’m not bothered, especially since I got myself an image extension. I forget which one but I can hover over image links and see the picture without needing to click. But Lamar’s posts win the unnecessary histrionics prize of the day.
I was a moderator at a board that got slammed by goatse/tubgirl and the like. We just went to THEIR board and spammed them with pictures of teddy bears and kittens. It actually worked.
My bolding.
GawkerMedia specifically allows accounts (burner accounts) that are untracked on IP number, so as to allow anonymous “tipsters” for everything from celebrity gossip to Wikileaks-style whistleblowing. It was a conscious choice by their management, to overrule the individual websites’ teams’ openly-stated concerns, to allow this.
The situation here is completely different - everyone is tracked by IP, which I believe greatly reduces the incidents of sock and trolling. I comment at Gawker, Jezebel and io9, and even our Pit is a hippy freelove festival, compared to the seething stew of hate and trollery that is the Gawker and Jezebel commentariat. Which is why I mostly stick to io9, but even that was affected by this latest spree.
Basically, it wouldn’t happen to that degree here even if we allowed GIFs. Which we’re not going to do, but it’s good to know why, all the same.
It would be possible to write a script that would display images in-line. The only problem is that there’s no way to distinguish from the use of [noparse][img][/noparse] tags and bare URLs.
Why is their existence not currently manifesting in the form of any conspicuous attack method that is currently possible here - i.e. links?
Seems a bit weird that they would all be there, massed, poised to attack by one and only one method that happens to be something which in reality, won’t happen here for reasons other than your concerns.
For those that want to use words in posts…
…and wonder why it should not be allowed here, read what is happening at Yale a while ago.
Someone posted nasty, harassing things about two female students. They made sexually charged slurs, they claimed one of the female students had a veneral disease, and other horrific comments.
Would they do that here? Oh, hell yes. So fast that it would make your head spin. There are websites dedicated to trashing the SDMB (Why? No fucking idea.) and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is all they are talking about today.
So I vote we get rid of the ability to use words* on the SDMB, because someone somewhere did something mean with words and might do it here too.
I dunno what’s happening on Gawker, and I really don’t care, but just the ability to post gifs isn’t at the root of the problem. I go to plenty of boards that allow gifs, and while once in a great while someone will post something out of line, that’s what mods are for, and they nip it in the bud just like any other violation of the board rules/standards.
None of which says I necessarily want gifs here, but paranoia over what images might get posted shouldn’t be the reason to keep them out.
