But, just remember, you throw a heck of a party.
[sub]your friends[/sub]
IMPORTANT NOTE:
I just want to remind y’all that the moderators and admininstrators have no information beyond what y’all have. We wish we could help by responding to some of these suggestions, but, in the absence of any inside information, we are instructed NOT to speculate or hypothesize or offer comment.
Even with all your handsome pay
I can sympathise- I think we are all in a vacuum at the moment- and to be honest our opinions will count for nothing.
But why do people WANT avatars?
What post is that in?
-FrL-
I can see that they’re not so messy as I thought.
They still seem… I don’t know, silly or something… But that’s just my conservative streak talking I’m sure.
-FrL-
Does it matter? This is starting to feel like a microcosm of the abortion debate. Some people want 'em, some don’t. If you don’t want one, don’t have one. (And turn them off altogether so you don’t even have to see if someone else has one.)
Because I am a visual person. I can’t remember names for crap but I remember faces. Similarly, I recognize posters with avatars MUCH better than posters with just names (who all sort of run together for me). Whether it’s an actual picture of the person or just a cartoon or even a specific smiley face, it’s a visual symbol that I can connect to a lot easier than a name.
Good explanation, it made me realize that I am not a visual person, but more of a stat guy. I think there are several hundred dopers that I can distinguish in some way based on user name, location and posting styles. Avatars probably won’t help me, especially as some posters will change them. In fact, I am frightened by what **Bosda ** might do with this feature. (That was just a joke for the humor impaired)
Jim
By way of example, and no offense intended, you (What Exit?) are indistinguishable to me from WhyNot. I recognize both names as being very familiar, but mostly it’s just that out of the corner of my eye I see a short name that starts with a W and asks a question and that’s pretty much how it gets filed. I realize that you are two different people, but I couldn’t tell you which one of you said any given thing because it’s not filed separately in my brain. The corner of my eye thing is true, too, I read the content of the post and don’t really actually LOOK at the name. With an avatar it’s easier to recognize without close scrutiny.
Makes sense to me. It is just a different way of filing information away and if I recall correctly you are an artist and thus a very visual person. I am a programmer and a baseball fanatic, so I remember things in terms of data and stats.
You have done a great job explaining the use of (small, non-animated) avatars to help identify people. As I mentioned, it was your earlier post that brought me over to being neutral on the subject. Having mainly seen the Disney boards my wife lurks on; I have a great fear and loathing of large animated avatars and the matching signatures.
Jim
Maybe I’m missing a post, but since you just posted, Opalcat, I’d thought I’d ask- what examples did you give? I saw a couple people use the plural, but I only saw the link to your site (and since What Exit just posted, I’ll say I think he’s one of the ones that did).
Personally, I think the ones on your place are a tiny bit too small for my taste. The vB’s own help forums are a nice simple example, IMHO. This example shows avatars that aren’t too conspicuous and that a mix of avatar/non-avatar users doesn’t screw up the layout.
Looking back, I guess I misread, at least as far as What Exit goes. Anyhow, I wouldn’t mind the vBulletin’s board style I linked set to our colours with that <64X64 pic. It seems to be about the same length as the join/posts/location info trio on the right of the user banner/bar, so it doesn’t add to page length.
Those aren’t too bad, but I sure wouldn’t want them any bigger. The ones on Fathom are about as tall as your name and title on the left.
Yeah my dad’s an engineer and he’s the same way. Oh, and when I finish my current self portrait painting* I think I am going to make a tiny version as my new avatar on Fathom. My current one is from sometime like… 1999?? 2000? My face is blue in both of them, though, so it should still be recognizable for people.
Stats? Data? Don’t ask me to remember numbers. I have a hard time reading off strings of numbers aloud (like reading a serial number into the phone) without mixing up the order. My brain no like numbers. Or names. Or titles of songs, singers, characters in books (though I read like a mofo, I can never tell you afterward what the characters’ names were)… it’s a frustrating thing to be sure.
*which is 5’ by 5’ in real life and takes up pretty much my entire living room. be interesting to see how it looks at 32x32 pixels. 
I enjoy the ones at Opal’s place, but that may just be because I’ve grown accoustomed to that particular avatar size. I wouldn’t pitch a fit if we got avatars the size in your example though, I’d just accept and adjust to them.
And I would consider myself a numbers guy too, only I’m a numbers guy with a tremendously short attention span. So the pictures help me learn to associate.
Ditto. I am also a very visual person and avatars (64x64 maximum) are helpful to me in identifying individuals. Usernames are useless to me for that purpose. It must have something to do with how us visual oriented people store memories in our brains.
Because of this strong identification of avatars to individuals, I hate it when people change their avatar. It screws up my brain and actually makes things more confusing to me than if I had never associated an avatar with a poster.
Like the rules we have about changing usernames, we should have some limits to how frequently someone could change their avatar. It should be used for identification, not as a flavor-of-the-week bumper sticker.
Good point, slight nit-pick(?) for the gamers. Sometimes when a member wants to post in a character, whether it’s a D&D game or mafia, those games can take up a tremendous amount of our posting time when we get involved. For example I’m involved in a Simpson-esque themed game right now. And rather than post a picture of Bart in all my sigs (annoying for both me an others), I just changed my avatar temporarily so people can identify my character. Once the game is over I will go back to my to my “standard” identifiable avatar as just " boring ol’ lab guy".
New sigs are fun, rotating sigs even better, but I like you point in general.
Everyone complains about the slowness of SDMB but I just have to say that when I clicked that link CarnalK had above it took almost a full minute for that page to load.