Ice Wolf: I know what you’re saying, but every single one of those things you mentioned makes posts harder to read, and thus easier to sneak a rule-breaking post by the moderators. Posting in a dark color like purple doesn’t do this.
I’m with Achernar on this one, it’s a silly thing to get worked up about. I actually like raisinbread’s purple posts.
I actually considered bringing this up myself, based on the same thread that Eutychus objected to (it’s here if anyone wants to see). The purple itself is bad - it’s an obvious attempt to draw the eyes, and it’s a successful one, but it makes me nearly oblivious to the content of your posts, unless I make a serious effort not to simply dismiss them. For all I know, you might well be not only a particle physicist, but a black belt and a rock musician as well -but when one of your posts comes up, all I see is purple. It doesn’t make me take you seriously; quite the opposite. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to describe the content of any of your previous posts, except by color.
As I say, the purple is bad enough. However, in that linked thread, you do something far more annoying than that: you have multiple alternating colors, within a single word. You also have a large, obvious typo; that wasn’t intentional, but to a certain extent it tend to happen when one uses a large amount of elaborate coding, and it only makes the whole thing more obvious, which exacerbates the problem.
When I come to the SDMB, it is to read people’s posts for their content. When people use coding practices designed solely to act as a visual attention grabber, it detracts from my (and others’) ability to do that. For that reason, the mods have fairly consistently shut down people who post in all large type, or who have gigantic signature files, or who post bizarre ASCII art figurines (they even banned a poster, SweetSue, for being approximately 10[sup]100[/sup] times as annoying as you or I could be if we dedicated our entire lives to it; if you’re really curious, try a search on her name in the Pit). Unfortunately, to me at least, your purplisms fall into this category; the text coloring subtracts substantially from the value of your postings. Furthermore, your use of a rainbow-hued word appears, to me, as something that ought to Heavily Discouraged, for the same reason that we don’t allow the use of the blink tag, or animated smilies: it serves only to distract, without any other possible purpose. I would, therefore, appeal to you to not do so, as a mature human being who has respect for others as his equals.
None of the above should be taken as an atack or a flame. It is opinion and advice. I do hope that yiu will consider it well, before you decide how you will post here.
What about expressiveness? How you post is part of your personality, and it’s not all about the words you use.
Some Guy, are you sure you have the right user? SweetSue? I don’t get any hits searching for that name, and their profile says they’ve made 0 posts.
Here is an example of Sweet Sue’s posting style, with links to more of the same. Evidently I misremembered the spacing.
With regard to the previous post, ideally it is almost entirely about the words that you use. I’m not saying that posting in color should never be allowed; I am saying that visual elements that consistently distract from your meaning, or that degrade one’s ability to read other people’s words in the same thread, are a bad idea, since they tend to cause others (such as myself) to simply skip your contributions.
Hmmm, interesting.
SweetSue
Sweet Sue
Anyway, in my opinion the difference between that case and one like this one is not the degree of annoyingness, but the intent. You agree that there’s a difference between doing something in spite of the fact that some people find it annoying, and doing something because of the fact that some people find it annoying. Right?
Let’s make a rule about no blanket posts in color. And then let’s make a rule no sigs. Then let’s make a rule that nobody can post a fictitious “location”, like “the kingdom of butter” or “…and around the corner”. And let’s make everyone register only using their full legal name, no nicknames, no aliases. And let’s make a rule that everyone must post their gender, so we know what pronouns to use for them, because the he/she him/her business is annoying and frustrating. And then let’s remove all the smileys, and only allow ascii smileys.
There are a lot of things allowed that some people find annoying. As long as the annoyance doesn’t make moderating more difficult (like posting in leet, or other languages, or rainbow font), I’m loathe to say we should make a rule eliminating it. What one person finds annoying another person finds a fun way to express their creativity and personality. Seems to me if we start eliminating things someone finds annoying, we quickly have nothing left.
So raisinbread likes to post in purple? There are certainly far worse colors. I’m hard pressed to find a better color (one that stands out less and clashes less with backgrounds), other than plain black. So what if that affects her credibility, or makes her posts look less about the content and more about the “look at me”? That’s her choice to make, and if that means people take her less seriously or give her opinions less weight, that’s the consequence she chooses. How is that any different than using a weird poster name?
Such as*
imthjckaz - yeah, I’d listen to a jackass who can’t spell jackass
peepthis - can’t decide if this is a euphamism for a different command to ___ this
hardygrrl - spells “girl” with all r’s, must be mindless teen drivel
I don’t see what the harm is in allowing this to continue. I don’t see how it is any different than any of the other features I listed at the top. If it is annoying to some posters, they can learn to avoid her or put her on ignore. I would vote against a rule. (Like I get a vote.)
By the way, the reason this thread should be in the Pit is not because of behavior, but because it is arguably questioning a moderator’s comment.
- No offense to the above - names chosen from this thread where I could find an obvious comment. No intention to imply I agree with above comments.
Okay, now that one’s just over the top.
FTR, Irishman has summed up my position on this matter. I would have said Q.E.D. did, but I don’t necessarily like it or dislike it. But I am jealous that I didn’t think of it first. 
FTR, my post above was only a comment on the way raisinbread was being a tad melodramatic in his/her wording. I personally don’t care one way or the other about purple font; far more annoying and uncreative are the cliches and hackneyed phrases used endlessly by many others on the Board (Hi Opal, Pie, Posting.Like.This.For.Emphasis, felching, etc, etc). It seems ridiculous to me to get worked up over purple-ness.
I personally wish that all message board plain text would appear as black on a light background, but I digress.
What I don’t understand is why anyone would adopt a posting style that makes their posts…well, not difficult to read, but not easy to read, either.
When I post, above all, I want to be read. I don’t aim to be agreed with or met with approval; mostly, I want others to read and understand what I’m saying. And because I want that, I’m not going to do anything that impairs the readability or intelligibility of my posts. This includes posting in an… er, atypical manner. But that’s just me.
Ultimately, I agree that posters are free to post as they please, so long as they accept the consequences of their posting style. I am, after all, equally free to think of the poster and their posts as I please.
Irishman: << Let’s make a rule about no blanket posts in color. And then let’s make a rule no sigs. Then let’s make a rule that nobody can post a fictitious “location”, like “the kingdom of butter” or “…and around the corner”. And let’s make everyone register only using their full legal name, no nicknames, no aliases. And let’s make a rule that everyone must post their gender, so we know what pronouns to use for them, because the he/she him/her business is annoying and frustrating. And then let’s remove all the smileys, and only allow ascii smileys. >>
Well, we’d certainly save some bandwidth and some time if we dropped color, sigs, and smileys – all smileys. Far as I’m concerned, it would be just fine if we dropped all those, if it’ll make the boards more efficient.
I don’t see that posting under your real name or forbidding phony locations would save any time, and requiring gender would just take MORE time, not less. So, those wouldn’t be helpful as rules.
We could drop location, of course, that would probably help a little.
Psssst: [sup]Don’t tell me “whoosh” for the above post. Irishman, did I get ya? Happy pre-April Fool’s Day![/sup]
OK, seriously, we allow things like sigs, colors, and smileys because they can enhance posts, and they aren’t abused. A post like the ones making designs all in smileys are OK as “tests”, but it’d get pretty damn :mad: annoying :smack: if :eek: used 
to excess 
in someone’s ;j post 
, wouldn’t it :dubious: ?
Similarly, abuse of the color features can be very annoying, such as imthjckaz’s post above. Similarly with the over-use of sigs.
In Curious Canuck’s quoting raisinbread above, frankly I can barely read it, the lighter color is a serious eye strain (which was Canuck’s point, I presume.)
So, we’re back to basics: don’t be a jerk. I don’t think we need an additional rule. People who are abusing the colors (or any other feature) for purposes of jerkiness are not welcome here. The question of whether all purple or red or whatever is being jerky depends on the eye of the beholder – I guess, as so many things often do. this color, for instance, is damn hard to read.
My own feeling is that anything that detracts from what you’re saying is stupid. I’m not sure to what extent stupidity and jerkhood overlap.
Dear Raisinbread:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
~Thoreau~
The entirely non-binding opinion of another poster:
No rule is needed. raisinbread does consistently use the purple colour, but it’s not tremendously annoying, and it doesn’t make the posts difficult to read. If it did, the mods would probably lose patience with it in a real hurry, and put a stop to it.
When I read it, it sets off a little signal in my brain that says “Oh, this. Well, whatever. Let’s see if there’s something valuable in this anyway. I wonder how long it will take him/her to grow out of this”.
This impression of immaturity is reinforced by the apparent draw of attention by statements like
and the appearance of threads like
So, my view: The poster can do whatever s/he wants. It doesn’t make the posts difficult to read, but it comes across as kinda childish. And that colours my view of the material presented in the posts, possibly taking away from information contained therein.
Special case. He was talking about Google, and coloring it like the Google logo. If he didn’t normally post in purple, that stunt probably would have been seen as clever by some, and only a tad too “precious” by others. In other words, it would have stood out more, and been more effective - the purpose for allowing posting in colors.
That said, he could do a lot worse things than insist on posting in purple, and could choose a lot worse colors, as has been observed. The purple he’s using is readable against the two background colors posts are displayed in.
Suppose his prose was purple?
Sweet Sue doesn’t seem to have been banned, BTW. It appears that she got bored and left.
One of the things that we really frown on here is anything that looks like a mis-quoting or a misrepresentation of what someone else originally said.
Yeah, this instance was twitting someone a bit, but it STILL looks bad.
Do not do this EVER again, any of you.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
PS If you don’t like what someone says, unless they’re doing something against our rules (like, say misquoting someone, just for giggles), just don’t read it. If it is against our rules, report it.
Umm, no offense Tuba, but could you clarify, please? I’m not sure exactly what you mean, honestly. That could just be me, of curse, but since you seem to be angry, I want to be certain exactly what it is that you’re angry about, so that I can avoid doing it :).
I think TubaDiva was referring to peepthis’s post above with the quotes parodying raisinbread’s earnestness. A quick read might mistake them for something raisinbread actually posted, and that’s the problem.
I don’t see any other made-up quotes.
If I’ve misinterpreted what TubaDiva posted, I welcome her correction.
I found it a little strange, too. I didn’t misquote you in the message immediately preceding it, and you’re not acting misquoted … I’m guessing it refers to CuriousCanuck modifying the color into near-illegibility when quoting rasinbread, and Dex thinking it was the actual color.