Oh. I knew that. . . I was just checking you. :smack:
Tripler
Hey look, what’s that over there?!? :: ducks and runs ::
I think that 80 x 80 is way too huge for avatars, personally. At fathom we use 32 x 32 and I don’t think it looks cluttery or anything.
The purple would take a little getting use to*, but the avatars on your site look very non-bothersome. I would not even bother turning those off.
- I understand that the purple and the small avatars are tied together. Just another lame attempt at a little humor.
I did say “So we could only use images that are properly authorized or known to be public domain”. I should have said “I’m guessing that we could use” etc. because I’m not on the staff.
As for fair use, I do vaguely know what it means. The question is will fair use be enough to allow us to use pretty much any image we want. I’m guessing no. But it’s TPTB’s call.
So, the place will be full of sock puppets and moronic teenagers-but we will have advertisements?
Oh great. And the title “CM” is meaningless? How about we keep paying to keep the title- advertisements or not? I couldn’t give a damn about the advertisements- as they will be primarily USA based they won’t concern me in the least.
Probably not.
By the reactions here, you’d think the kids are assembling at the gates waiting to create avatars and post pictures. Maybe they’re gathering on MySpace getting each other excited over the prospect of the SDMB allowing avatars. You can almost feel the buzz.
Have you already forgotten how much more interesting this place was when it was free to post? How many posts have you seen in the last couple of years comparable to The Horror of Blimps, Master Wang-Ka’s Jehovah Witness story, etc.?
What does “free to post” have to do with “Horror of Blimps?” Scylla’s still here.
Excuse me for not instantly recalling a pair of pre-P2P posts that were up to your apparently exacting standards. The point is that the place was much more interesting. Try taking this at face value:
But of course that is a matter of opinion- and mine differs from yours.
The assumption that P2P led to less interesting posts is fallacious at best. I see no causal link here.
I don’t know who’s assuming what, but there were no assumptions involved, just my observation. Yours has been different, apparently.
Count me as glad for Ed’s anounced change, against a rep system of any kind, and wanting to keep my CM title.
I’m concerned that Ed points out the intent to raise the pay-for-no-ads fee in line with lost revenue. That could be $50 in a couple years.
The worst thing about the ad genie is that they can then throttle revenue up by adding ads. Not quite making the revenue target with a banner at the top & 3 Googles at the bottom? We’ll just insert one between each post. Not my idea of a good thing.
That’s not really different than now, I suppose, but the overall tone of the announcement is that HQ has finally realized the SDMB can become for-profit operation. I find websites like msn or cnn or even the NY Times almost unusable until I block 85-90% of the ads. Only then can I actually even see the damn article between all the moving and/or brightly colored distractions.
If some day an SDMB thread looks like a typical NY Times article does now I’d quit if I couldn’t sucessfully block the ads or pay a fairly nominal sum to prevent them.
That reflects a concern I have with the viability of paying for SDMB with ads (note that I am not suggesting anything about LSLGuy’s habits in terms of blocking ads; he just brought the point up). Given the ubiquitousness of ad blockers I wonder how many people are simply going to block the ads if they are even remotely intrusive rather than paying the fee to prevent them in the first place.
Agreed.
I have PithHelmet (which I paid for) running on Safari, and I see hardly any ads anywhere. Suits me just fine if they drop the pay-to-post here.
And I also agree with Hostile Dialect - this place was more lively and interesting before it went P2P. We lost A LOT of colourful characters then.
I can think of no good reason to disallow avatars (provided you can turn them off, of course). The ones that Opal linked to seemed a little too small for my tastes, but I guess the optimal maximum size would largely depend on the layout of the threads.
An idea for how ot handle custom titles: on another board I frequent, custom titles are handed out solely at the whim of the moderators. In practice, this means that the large majority of posters have generic titles, but if you do or say (or are) something interesting or memorable, and if a moderator can think of a witty and/or relevant tag, you may log on one day to find a custom title under your screen name.
It’ve found it to be a good way for the board to have fun with the feature. Posters already have the sig line and location field to play with on their own; it’s good to mix it up.
Wait, there are ads on the internet? 
Wake me up when the reason to be happy becomes a reality.
O.K., let’s all be really nice to Jerry so he can tell us wonderful stories of hypothetical improvements.
An inevitable step (“modernizing” = any changes new ownership wants to make anyway) that no one asked for and is (even more than other promises) a pig in a poke.
So we won’t be paying for the SDMB, we’ll be paying to avoid obnoxious ads and associated baggage. This is a change of emphasis.
Fine with me. The attraction of this board for me was never the graphics or the speed with which I could search it or the presence or absence of ads, but the amusement I got from other members’ posts and the amusement they expressed at mine. These have been declining for a while (no insult intended – I’m just getting old and unfunny), but I doubt if it’s related to any technical or administrative problems of the SDMB. It’s still kind of funny/sad to see the disproportionate reaction to thin and vague promises of change.
The SDMB, or any board, is worthwhile (either on its own merits or as a hostage of unwanted advertising) based solely on its content – interesting threads with informative, provocative, or witty posts to follow. That is entirely up to the membership – the only real impact the ownership and administration has is the drastic, all-or-nothing control of the on/off switch, and everything else is relatively meaningless. Basically, we are being charged for the ability and ease and convenience with which we can create and read and share our own work. That’s not dishonest at all - we pay for stamps (or used to) too. But it’s as well to be clear about what we’re paying for, and in this case, mostly, it’s each other.
I am in agrreance with a lot of the points that King of Soup makes, but I am not certain about the decline in number of witty posts. What I have noticed is that due to the time the board has been around there is now a lot of replication - so many topics seem to reappear.
Wait – so you’re saying we’re replicants? :eek: