I’d be happy enough if all the smilies went away forever. I have been known to use them, but I wouldn’t miss them.
I’d be happier still if we could post images here - the ability to include diagrams and pictures within the flow of test would be very useful to many people on this board, I think.
The possibility of abuse could (conceivably) be overcome by permitting members to hotlink only those images that were stored in one specific web folder, over which only they had content control. I bet that isn’t a built in feature of vB though, so I can only dream it.
Agreed, OP. The only smilie I ever had any use for is ;-), and strangely, I managed to write quite a few letters and e-mails and other kinds of messages for years without knowing that it existed.
I want the rant guy! And the head-banging guy. I like the little animated ones. Couldn’t figure out why this board uses Kermit instead of the usual tongue-stuck-out and a yawn instead of the regular embarrassed emoticon. I’d trade the wierd colours for a bunny anyday
I think it’s brilliant that people came up with ways to interject emotional context into posts; it saves misunderstandings because words alone don’t necessarily convey the whole thought. Mind you, I see nobody objecting to the fake UBB code, which I also think is quite clever.
I totally agree here… we could use a few more smilies.
I doubt we’d see a net total increase in the number of smilies per post. Rather, we’d see more appropriate use of smilies. We’d see the rolleyes smiley once or twice and a finger-drumming smiley (useful when waiting for a cite) two or three times and a suspicious smiley (when the cite offered is questionable) two or three times. Without a wider assortment of smilies, we’d have what we have now - the same thread with everybody using rolleyes eight or ten times for everything.
I have no problem with a pukey. We could have rules that disallow puking in GQ and GD, since it’s essentially a form of opinionated editorializing.
I just don’t get this attitude. If you don’t want to use smilies, don’t use them. If other people do, because (for instance) maybe they’d rather be a little over-cautious to make sure their remarks-in-jest are properly interpreted as remarks-in-jest, then who are you to judge them?
I kind of, sort of do get the “no freaking smilies” attitude.
I like the concept of smilies but I’d be OK with just using ASCII text smilies, which served the same purpose, didn’t require complex Administrator and TechGod interventions to implement new ones, and didn’t distract from the sense of being in a text medium.
or = smile or = grin or - frown
>:-( = scowl = sticking tongue out
:z = wry amusement
:8-O = shock
:-{) = moustached smile
etc
But if we’re going to have any that get interpreted by board software as “Smilies” (graphical pix representing what the ASCII strings used to represent by themselves), then yes I’d like to see some of the existing ones edited and I’d like to see a few more added. And NO I, too, do not want freaking animated smilies. Please. I’m OK with the stationary ones but I’m amenable to going back to ASCII. Nothing should ever blink on a SDMB page.
I hate hate HATE the pretentious and snobbish “oh, words can convey so much, the beauty of the English language is of such exquisite blah blah blah only an imbecile would sink blah blah blah lowest common denominator blah blah blah” attitude.
Posts on something like the SDMB have two characteristics which make smilies very useful:
(1) Your posts are usually quick things making a quick point, not essays that you’ve read and reread and rewritten and triplechecked
(2) You don’t know who all is going to be reading them, and they don’t know you
Suppose, for instance, that esteemed poster MattMcl posted an OP about having a crappy day and some minorly bad things happening to him. I might be tempted to respond by saying “Ahh, it’s just God punishing you for being gay :)”. Now, I’m not claiming that’s the height of wit or anything approaching it, but it’s the kind of vaguley camaraderie-ish statement that makes the SDMB feel like a community, and not just an impersonal medium for debate. But I would be VERY hesitant to post that without the smilie, because of the chance, however small, that it wasn’t obvious that I was kidding. Of course, I could use my massive writing skills to, using only pure words and not vulgar symbols, make it totally crystal clear that I was kidding. But, honestly, it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Smilies are useful. They increase clarity communication. People who get all huffy about them are snobs.
Now, overuse of smilies should be punishable by preemptive banning. But overuse and use are two totally different things, with smilies like with most things.
I’m sorry, but this is patently incorrect. Pictures cross the boundaries of language and culture, something words do only with great difficulty, if at all. Pictures convey a great deal of information at a glance, with minimal possibility of misunderstanding or misinterpretation; again, this is not always the case with words, no matter how carefully chosen. I’ve seen more scuffles around here caused by the absence of a single smiley than have ever been caused by their overuse. Words alone are simply inadequate to convey the subtleties of emotion we are capable of as human beings. We are expressive creatures, with a body language as complex as any written tongue; a well-placed smiley can speak volumes.
Because tone of voice has no place in communication. Neither do gestures nor facial expression nor posture. And nobody ever misreads anyone, and any possible misreading could be cured if the author were just more careful. Good writers are never misread, so it follows that there is only one way to interpret any work worth the time it takes to read it.
Damn, Q.E.D. beat me to it. For a lot of people, conversing on a message board is like conversing with a group of people face to face. In real-time conversation, you have body language and facial expressions to help convey meaning. Emoticons fill in for those facial expressions online and allow the poster to write in a more conversational tone.
For those people who think the text should contain everything necessary, even good writers don’t always rely solely on dialogue to get their meaning across in novels and the like; characters are usually described as having expressions or tones of voice. In the case of one poster who knows nothing about another poster, it’s nearly impossible to tell sarcasm or jesting from earnestness. I admit, it is possible to write such that there is no ambiguity, but that takes a hell of a skill to do so naturally and I think most people don’t really have the time to sit there and tweak a gentle jab so that it doesn’t wind up sounding like a cold insult.
Besides, if we didn’t have smilies, you’d just wind up seeing more :smiles: or :gd&r: tags. That’s just moving the concept from graphics to text and doesn’t really solve anything.
or 
or 
= sticking tongue out