Most of us consider the current lean-and-mean experience to be a selling point, not a drawback. If you disagree, there are many, many blinking flashing boards that would welcome you.
Yes, I’d pay extra to be able to suppress the pictures in newspapers and magazines until such time as I wanted to see them. I’d pay much extra for that feature.
If only we could find a medium that allows us to have some kind of placeholders for pictures that would keep them out of the way until we wanted to see them. One that would not take time to display them unless it was something I really wanted to see, one that would not break the text I’m trying read into paragraphs I need to search for.
Then anyone who wanted to see the pictures could activate the placeholder and see them all they wanted. Anyone who didn’t want to, or didn’t want wait while they displayed could easily skip over them.
If only there was such a medium.
Indeed. Many here feel there are already too many smilies, and would rather there were none.
SDMB, love it or leave it, eh? Out of step with the (alleged) norm, go elsewhere! I’m not too surprised to see this attitude here. Didn’t really expect to see this sort of nastiness from Cervaise though.
But I never said anything about wanting a “blinking flashing board”, so I don’t know where you pulled that one from. And you know it is possible to like this place despite its drawbacks. And the lack of embedded pictures are a pretty minor drawback.
Another drawback (for me) of this board is the “we’re so much better than everyone else” attitude you see here. Watching my desire for embedded pictures and avatars get turned into “blinking & flashing” condescension really illustrates that.
And while I’m here, I don’t get all the grammar Nazi complaints. I don’t really see a whole lot of it here. And it’s never used to score points in an argument (one of the good things about this place). When grammar/spelling does get corrected, people tend to be nice about it. And I know I don’t mind getting corrected.
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But, we are.
Nobody has said you have to “love it or leave it.” What we have said is, if you want a Board with a different experience, you have to get that elsewhere, because we are the way we are because we want to be that way. We hope you like it enough to stay and enjoy it. But we aren’t changing just because YOU (and a few others) want us to.
Smilies are a good point. They are barely tolerated here. I use a heck of a lot less of them here than I do anywhere else on the net. And, while I miss the occasional animated smiley, I have seen plenty of smileys and animated smileys that I would be quite unhappy to see here. So I’m pleased at our rather limited selection.
Why is it that some people (you included, apparently) can’t understand how others don’t like experiences which are the same as what you prefer? It’s like that thread about the game Guitar Hero, which is filled with a couple posters’ rants about how silly the game is, because it doesn’t meet their predefined notions of what is a “fun” game. They watch as endless numbers of people get swept up by the game and say, “I don’t get it.” Well, ok. So you would prefer something else. That’s fine. But it isn’t going to happen here. And the reasons have been given. Since they are mainly a matter of aesthetics, they aren’t really arguable.
Again, we hope you like it, stay, and participate. But stop trying to argue everyone into accepting something that they don’t want to accept. We get your position, but it’s not our position. Nor is it likely to be anytime soon, thankfully.
The thing that started me reading the SDMB regularly was the wit. I love me some good, dry, intelligent wit - and also some good, ridiculous, juvenile dick and fart jokes. Where else can you get both, in equal quantities?
The thing that convinced me to pay up (if I can ever get the CC process to work for me) is the streamlined experience in tandem with the content. I really actively enjoy the bare-bones look, and would be sad to see it go. Not “OMG I hate you all this place sux now haxxxx!” sad, but “gee, I wish I could turn all this crap off” sad. I don’t think that the crowd for whom graphics are a selling point are necessarily the ideal target for the SDMB’s appeal - certainly some of them will fall on the bell curve of enjoyment here, but most will find other places that suit them better.
Then again, that’s just my opinion, and I’m not even a Member… yet. 
Please, please try the CC process again. I’m hoping it’s just being temperamental.
::groveling::
I’m going to give it another shot tomorrow, and email the illustrious TubaDiva if it’s still giving me trouble. No worries!
I think we should make **DSYoungEsq’s ** post above into a sticky and just refer people to it when they don’t “get it.” Very clear, very polite, the end.
One of the really neat things of this board is that you can actually talk about the economics of zombie movies with literate and thoughtful people.
Ever try reading a picture-heavy thread on dial-up? For anyone who doesn’t have high-speed internet (such as myself, at times), the lack of embedded pictures is a blessing, especially when you start visiting kitten threads in MPSIMS. People who want to see the image can click the link, and those who don’t don’t get their bandwidth chewed up and spat back at them unnecessarily.
At any rate, this board has beyond proven that it doesn’t need such bells and whistles–the content and posters here are enough to carry it.
Not only dial-up - even cheap broadband on an old slow computer gets annoying pretty fast with unwanted pictures everywhere. And dial-up would sometimes be so slow and frustrating as to send one away whimpering in misery. 
Even fast computers with expensive business-class broadband will have trouble rendering a page with lots of embedded graphics coming off multiple servers. Pages with lots of stuff in them are just slower, especially when the things are coming from many different locations – each separate connection needs to be negotiated by your browser and computer through your ISP and across the network.
But that’s not really the main point. The SDMB is kind of slow now, and I put up with that. The thing I believe I would dislike about a more graphic experience is the visual distraction. I wouldn’t mind avatars, assuming they were small and could be turned off, but embedded graphics would bug me.
I think you’re in the majority in the world in general, but isn’t it nice to have someplace not awash in pictures? Do pictures necessarily make content better? I for one would rather read the New Yorker than People. In high school history we used a two volume book by Morrison and Commager, with very few pictures, and it was far better than the picture-filled texts my kids used.
I can’t imagine how an avatar, chosen at the beginning of someone’s SDMB experience, can tell me more about their personality than my reading hundreds of their posts.
Projecting a bit, possibly?
And just maybe they will.
Not a fan of alleged norms? Why, then, do you appeal to one yourself?
Not one of the words I was thinking of.
It is probably worth noting that I, and a lot of others I’m sure, surf the dope at work. While my work does not have a policy of ‘work only’ internet, I’d much rather spend my free time with a page of blank text on my screen rather than a bunch of obviously ‘not work related’ stuff.
I go to various functions that tend to have groups of people discussing such things as politics, religion, recreational activities and other events too numerous to mention here. Not once in all the years I’ve attended these functions have I felt the need of an audio-visual presentation to hold up my end of the conversation.
Just sayin’.
Czarcasm, there’s nothing like a flip chart and laser pointer to get people to take you seriously.
In my limited experience on other message boards, I find that most people pick their avatar out of a limited pool of pictures, and then change them periodically, so that they are mostly useless as an identifier. (But I’m inferring from Voyager’s post that there are boards that don’t allow you to change your avatar. I don’t know.)
On other message boards I seen posts that are each a page full of captioned pictures, and tried to figure out the relevance to the topic. Then I scroll down to realize that these same pictures are on EVERY post. So now I have to go back and figure out relevant part of the post. “Oh, there it is, hidden between the pictures. He said ‘yup’ in the first post, and ‘LOL’ in the next one.” Then I decided that it’s too hard to sift through the crap to follow the discussion and leave.
No thanks.