We definitely need a nauseated/puking smile. I vote for Jayn_Newell’s version.
Also, :o and :smack: are redundant. Drop the oral gratification smile, because the head smack one expresses the sentiment much more clearly.
I say keep Wally. The finger-flipping smile might be too rude.
Lastly, get rid of ;j . It has a small number of devotees, but it really isn’t very useful. We could replace it with a devil smile. (Those can be useful on occasion, when you want to admit that a comment or suggestion leaves something to be desired ethically.)
My take on Wally: Why do we HAVE that smilie if no one UNDERSTANDS what it means?
I didn’t really want to open up debate on too many established smilies, but I have never really understood the meaning/point of that one (or the Happy Orthodox Jewish smilie, but that’s another debate).
To me, the point of a smilie is that they should clearly convey a message quicker (and maybe more twee) than words alone can. I mean, I could write, “just kidding,” or, I could hit the ole button, and you know what I mean. But the Wally? I guess that it’s an insult because its use is limited to the Pit, but I would not have assumed that based on looks alone. The wink makes it hard to understand. As an insult, it would make more sense to have the actual smilie part be the mad guy, instead of the winking guy. Then, it would be very clear that it is not a friendly jibe. (Of course, I cannot imagine being in a frame of mind where I actually wanted to call someone names but would result to using a twee little smilie. But that’s yet another debate.)
Was there a point to this rant? I guess only that I think the Wally fails as a smilie - it does not send a clear message of its own.
How would that affect the existing messages? I imagine that it would make them harder to read in that where the messages might have once been coherent (hey, I’m trying to be generous), the loss of the smilies might make them lose meaning. I don’t think that we should delete any smilie. Maybe move one out of the smilie box to discourage use, but that’s it.
There is a technical reason we should avoid animated smilies: At least some of us use Privoxy to avoid ads, and have it configured to disable GIF animations. If smilies were animated, those of us using this would not know it. If the animation were essential to understanding the smilie, we would not get it.
All this is in addition to the fact that animation is a bad idea for many other reasons. It’s just another nail in the coffin.
Wow, if I’d have known that people were going to take that seriously, I would have gone to the trouble to figure out how to make the background transparent, and to optimize the color tables, and the like. I’m not sure it’d exactly fit in, except as an in-joke, but if folks really want it, sure, I’ll put it on the table.
And I think that “because they’re annoying” is a quite sufficient reason not to use animated smilies. Were it strictly a technical matter, I wouldn’t be quite so opposed.
Smilies are just another tool of communication, animated or otherwise.
If you find them annoying, you are probably someone who takes yourself way too seriously.
Like I do.
I personally find “IMHO”, “LOL”, and all those other juvenile abbreviations annoying, as well as all graphical smilies. Smilies were invented as a semi-clever use of the keyboard’s limited graphical capability. Transfering that to small yellow balls with faces completely destroys the ingenuity of the original intent. Its incredibly annoying to find get automatically turned into a yellow ball because they imply different context.
That said, there’s poor communication and effective communication, using any language, pictograph, animation, small film clip, color.
The more smillies the board has, the more options we have in terms of communicating with each other, with the opportunity for increased precision.
If the board is truly interested in fighting ignorance, then any opportunity to increase communcative accuracy by use of a wider lexicon is a good thing.
Cool! I dug up the original post on SDMB that contained those submissions, but the various image-hosting sites people used were either gone or no longer had the smilies up.
One reason I was looking for this was that I remembered a pretty good pukey smilie (see #42 in the section “Submissions between 10 May and 24 May 2002 / aka Beware of geeks bearing .gifs”), and if we’re going to go with a pukey smilie (seems popular idea), it should be one that is instantaneously self-explanatory. No offense to the artists, but some of the current submissions look like someone puffing up in temper before screaming, and/or aren’t easy to make out at all.
button, and you know what I mean. But the Wally? I guess that it’s an insult because its use is limited to the Pit, but I would not have assumed that based on looks alone. The wink makes it hard to understand. As an insult, it would make more sense to have the actual smilie part be the mad guy, instead of the winking guy. Then, it would be very clear that it is not a friendly jibe. (Of course, I cannot imagine being in a frame of mind where I actually wanted to call someone names but would result to using a twee little smilie. But that’s yet another debate.)
get automatically turned into a yellow ball because they imply different context.