Yeah. If the SDMB were to go with avatars, I’d lobby hard for a uniform, very small size and a complete ban on animation.
I’d lobby hard for the users to have options to turn those options on or off. 
Well, that’s a given. But as a user who gets people confused a lot, and who might thus find avatars useful, I’d still want them to be un-obnoxious.
I think that there must be a generational divide here, between those who are used to text as the primary medium of transmission of information, and those who are used to text as supplement, or at least complement to visually stimulating information. I.e. those whose background is purely literary and text driven, e.g. books, newspapers, journals, etc., and those whose backgrounds include, say, graphic novels and related graphic clues as might be found on any number of websites, and, of course, in computerized games. (Included here are those who grew up using the newer textbooks which are very “sexy” and have lots of pictures, diagrams, color, and all manner of (distracting) non-text items on every page.) Some people find avatars and other visual aspects to be essential, or at least important, and some find them redundant at best, unwanted distractions at worst.
Emphasis added. I had to stop and let the implications of that sink in for a minute. That isn’t a mere divide. It’s a freakin’ Grand Canyon.
In an earlier thread I argued vigorously against avatars. I feel a bit sheepish about it, because I don’t feel as strongly now (although I’m still moderately against avatars here). However, that quote confirms one of my arguments: avatars are in a real sense a backward step.
But there’s another argument I made that I think (in my totally non-official opinion) is still the show-stopper: copyright. When people lobbied for a new smiley, the PTB were insistent that it be someone’s original work and they gave permission for it to be used here. If one little smiley was such a hard sell, I don’t see how random avatars would be allowed here at all (again, in my totally non-official opinion). To avoid copyright issues, we could have a standard set of approved avatars. But is that what people really want?
I did suggest Slug create such a set or perhaps allow clips from existing column illustrations. But we can’t expect him to do that for free, and at the moment there probably isn’t spare money to pay him fairly.
I think CC is a bit off the mark here. (For one thing, I sincerely doubt there are many members of the Dope that grew up before the advent of comic books.) As a person who feels perfectly comfortable with both textual and visual information, and who has spent a fair amount of time in forums with a more relaxed attitude to pictures and avatars, I think the real divide is between those who see posting as primarily a form of self-expression and/or social interaction, versus those who see it as a means to communicate specific information or opinion or to promote debate; the Dope trends strongly towards the latter point of view (witness the disdain for "LiveJournal-style posts"). For the former, avatars are sort of the “hair and makeup” of one’s posts; they are not the content, as such, but they are a key form of self-presentation and thus are seen to influence how the content is received. For the latter, they are clutter.
At the same time, avatars do have some concrete informational value; e.g., in differentiating users, as I mentioned upthread. Using a predefined library of icons would be perfectly acceptable to me, if such a library were available.
This is a good point, and I think that instead of standing in opposition to my speculation, it may stand aside it. I believe this is another dichotomy that is reflected in the emblematic (no pun intended) issue of the avatars. I’d still suggest, although I haven’t thought it through very well, that the divide between self-expressers and information sharers may still be rooted in the different generations and the primary ways they’ve experienced ideas. (And for the record, I wasn’t referring to anyone who grew up *prior *to comic books, but rather to those who grew up prior to what a lot of people call graphic novels.) Self-expression became a terribly important notion in the 60’s and 70’s, and became a virtual mantra for many parents - as evinced in the way that children born in the 20 or 30 years following that were raised and encouraged.
Hmmm. To hijack this thread completely:
Considering that graphic novels today are a laughably niche product compared to the popularity of comics back in their heyday (1930s-1950s, roughly), and especially that comics in any form are much less popular among children in particular now than they were then, how do you relate this to a generational change in preference for visual vs textual information?
…maybe only to the extent that ideas come to book readers in a different way from the way ideas come to “readers” of graphic novels. If graphic novels are not widely read, then that aspect of my argument is a bit weak, I confess. I note, by the way, to hijack this even more, that Art Spiegelman, who is often touted as the father of the graphic novel, disclaims that term. He likes “comics,” says that “graphic novel” is pretentious, and said that if he’s claimed to be the father of the graphic novel, that he wants a paternity test.
No good solid demographic studies for current comics readers exist that I know of, but I vaguely remember a back-of-the-envelope calculation in The Comics Journal a few years ago that concluded that about one-half of one percent of Americans regularly read comics (excluding comic strips), versus around 40% in the 1940s. The manga boom may have changed that, but I doubt it’s gone over 10% or so.
“Graphic Novel” is a useful term, in that it implies a long connected narrative intended to be read as a unit, although nowadays it tends to be used as a synonym for “book-length collection of any serialized comic except comic strips”. The New York Times dodged the issue by calling its new bestseller list “Graphic Books”, much to the ire of the web.
Also, anyone calling Art Spiegelman “father of the graphic novel” is insane; Will Eisner is a much better candidate.
I believe Will Eisner even coined the term “graphic novel” for his 1978 work A Contract With God. {Rummages on Google} Ah, here we go: a 2003 Time magazine interview with Eisner. Spiegelman is pretty much a johnny-come-lately, and Maus is mediocre at best, only getting a pass from “serious” critics because it’s about the Holocaust, so it must be, like, important. If you want anthropomorphic animals re-enacting human history, read Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo series instead.
I thought Maus was excellent; it’s just not the first thing to deserve to be called a “graphic novel” by a couple of decades at least. I’d suggest the “woodcut novels” by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, et al., which date to the 1920s-1930s, have a pretty solid claim.
I want to bump this suggestion. It’s not that it’s more important than avatars or search lockouts or anything else, but rather that it’s an obvious slam dunk that mods and admins seem unwilling even to acknowledge. I’m sure they’re busy, and that they’re (understandably) a little sick of dealing with demands that they do something differently, but I must admit that I’m a little disheartened by the complete lack of a response. Last month there was a thread about it in this forum that was on the front page a couple of times over the course of three weeks, and whose OP I reported in case it had just gone unnoticed, which got no mod/admin reply at all.
I never complain about management here, but I’d really appreciate some feedback on this.
How do I subscribe to the RSS feed? I’m not seeing the RSS icon anywhere. I use Outlook as a reader.