My first impression is that there is a story behind this, probably involving LSD and a Jack in the Box drive thru.
No really you are missing my point. The ideas may be super distinguished, but who they belong to gets foggy without some strong identity marker to attach them to. Then there are just a bunch of cool ideas floating around in a void. I mean sure you can have an intelligent conversation with random strangers. But if there’s no lasting identity, the kind of conversations that only become meaningful overtime become impossible. It becomes speed dating instead of courting. Ding! Next topic, draw seven cards from the deck.
I rather think it is. The other place (IME) where you tend to get slightly older posters are on shooting/hunting/military history messageboards, and frankly a lot of them are cranky old men who believe that if you don’t 100% support a right to own whatever guns you like in whatever quantitiy you like, then you’re a Communist or a “Librul” or whatever the hell the trendy insult for anyone who disagrees with them is that week.
I’m not for a moment saying that the SDMB is some sort of internet version of an Athenian Forum at the height of their Golden Age. But I’m saying that it’s quite unlike pretty much any other messageboard I’ve posted on (and it’s been a few).
FWIW, I’m not strongly against avatars at all. If I had to vote in a binding resolution on the matter, I’d vote “No”, but if the majority vote was “Yes” then I’d just shrug my shoulders, disable them in user preferences, and then carry on as before.
You mean like a poster’s name?
Wouldn’t the logical end point of facilitating discussion and the like be to make contribution entirely anonymous? In the sense that the board is about discussion and debate above all, having screenames is pretty much an expression of personality and something to hang onto in disregard for actual debate. There certainly seem to be posters such that other posters will ignore or mock their contributions solely because of who they are.
I’m trying to clarify your request because I’m one of those people who don’t understand what you’re looking for.
To me, this place is very social. I know things about people here that I don’t know about my neighbors. And once I know something about them, the next time I see them posting about something, I attach that information to their username.
Here’s my suggestion. Try hanging out at the MMP for a bit. Then read more threads in MPSIMS for a while. I took a quick glance at the forums you post in and it’s mostly the non-social forums like GD, GQ and Cafe. You might be reading MPSIMS a lot, but you don’t post there all that frequently. In MPSIMS, you’ll read things about people’s lives that can’t help but make an impression on you. Then you’ll have some memory marker to hang on the username. When you read about people’s real lives, which is what happens a lot in MPSIMS, and you reveal some things about your own life, the people become much more than just words on a screen. You might even feel inspired to discuss issues with people privately, and that takes the human aspect to the next level.
The avatar discussion got huge, but I don’t think it really addresses your issue.
Well, that’s a big part of why we frown on frivolous username changes. Yeah, we’ll change a username a few times, but we don’t allow people to change them very often. So the usernames ARE the lasting identity that you want. You just need to pay more attention to them. Many people also have sigs, which can be another identifier.
Mini Avatar Standard Avatar
/---\ OOOOOOOO
| * * | O O Hey Mini, you there?
| --- | "I just got back from O [O] [O] O
\___/ the dope and all I O O Ever since you've accepted ads
got was this lousy O o O we don't talk much anymore.
Avatar." O O You get one little ad and
--jsgodess O [_____] O suddenly you're too good for me.
O O Just remember, I made you man!
OOOOOOOO
Mini Avatar Standard Avatar
/---\ OOOOOOOO
| * * | O O Hey Mini?
| --- | Yes standard, what's up? O [O] [O] O
\___/ O O You know, if they allow real
O o O avatars, we're done here.
Yes, I know. O O
O [_____] O What will you do if that happens?
O O
I have friends at AOL, OOOOOOOO
probably head over there.
I suppose it depends on what kind of discussion you want to have. For a debate about issues, you might have a point.
For a more ‘social’ kind of discussion, expression of personality is key. I would certainly say that part of the reason I hang out at the SDMB is not just to hear the opinions of other people and discuss those opinions, but to get to know some fabulous people, and connect what they have to say about widely differing subjects to get a sense of how those details round out their character.
Again, purely a matter of personal preference - I like nested quotes, to the point that I used to nest them manually before they turned that option back on recently.