# No Avatars Here? Why? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 19, 2012, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626 "2012-06-19T09:55:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/181 "2012-06-20T00:45:43Z")
We need a poll, I like less pictures as it makes it easier for me to view at work, ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/182 "2012-06-20T00:47:50Z")
Well, I’m on record as saying avatars should be a privilege of paid membership. Gosh, I wonder how much snark that will get me off board? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/183 "2012-06-20T00:48:15Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > Frequent posters with strong opinions about wanting avatars who were willing to fight for them for days on end in hundreds of posts weren’t willing or inclined to take 30 seconds to install a small script and update 1 line of their SDMB profile to actually have them. That kind of implies that when push comes to shove nobody really cares much about the things doesn’t it? And therefore the lack of them isn’t driving this place into the ground. And given that they would add some work for the mods (because you know some smartasses around here that like to push the rules to the limit would have avatars that would have others bitching like hell) its seems pretty reasonable to me for the TPT to say nyet. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/184 "2012-06-20T00:50:15Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > We need a poll, 😛 😃 Good one. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/185 "2012-06-20T00:52:36Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Well, I’m on record as saying avatars should be a privilege of paid membership. > > Gosh, I wonder how much snark that will get me off board? :rolleyes: Probably none–that seems to be the pro-snark position. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/186 "2012-06-20T01:04:34Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > That kind of implies that when push comes to shove nobody really cares much about the things doesn’t it? And therefore the lack of them isn’t driving this place into the ground. And given that they would add some work for the mods (because you know some smartasses around here that like to push the rules to the limit would have avatars that would have others bitching like hell) its seems pretty reasonable to me for the TPT to say nyet. Maybe so but some might be afraid of greasemonkey or worry that it is some hack or security problem. Others might think that because it’s a “script” it means they need to be a programmer to use it. Maybe they missed the thread entirely and didn’t realize there was such a simple solution. I don’t know. That’s why I was asking someone who supports avatars but doesn’t use the script. Aside from all the irrational arguments against avatars, that solution addresses the only possibly legitimate (but still unproven) objection which you state - too much additional work for the moderators. For the record several mods during the great debate a year ago said they wouldn’t mind the ‘burden’ and it would basically be the same as modding posts. If they see an avatar that breaks the rules or one is reported to them they follow the current system of note/warning/banning in whatever order or combination they deem appropriate for the situation. It is easier than moderating posts because each user has only one avatar, but might make many posts. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/187 "2012-06-20T01:06:25Z")
> [@Gezmo](#): > > Here is an example of a forum with avatars, and also, a well built community. > [http://forums.spacebattles.com/](http://forums.spacebattles.com/) Thank you, newbie, for teaching us what a well-built community looks like. I continue to maintain, however, that only bad people use avatars. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/188 "2012-06-20T01:09:37Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > It’s because these forums prefer proper capitalisation, punctuation and spelling over pretty pictures of kittens. These aren’t mutually exclusive. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Are folks that read unillustrated books “ludites”? Folks that refuse to read illustrated books might be. > [@Giraffe](#): > > It’s a nice additional visual cue, and a chance for a bit of self-expression that smart people often do good things with. I’d love to see the avatars some of the creative people here come up with. I’m very pro-avatar. > [@Crazyhorse](#): > > Just like hiding post counts of guests so paying members have no idea who they are talking to without opening up their profile, while allowing guests to see the post counts of paying members, in the case of avatars the paying members would stand more to gain by differentiating between guests but you would be allowing guests to have that benefit when viewing posts of paying members. And locations. This is a real headscratcher. So lame. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/189 "2012-06-20T01:16:47Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > It would be a great idea if there were even a hope in hell they would allow avatars when the trial period went well. > > It is a little ironic that much of the ignorance fought begins with a mentality of “If I don’t like something nobody should be able to have it, even if it doesn’t affect me in any way.” but so seems to be the argument of anyone against avatars so far. > > But a question for you: You usually speak up for avatars when the subject comes up, but back in the great avatar debate of 2011 when \*\*Polerius \*\*and \*\*ntucker \*\*offered an easy solution, you didn’t update your profile with a link to an avatar. What prevented you from doing that? (serious question because I would have really liked to see the idea take off, but it died in infancy due to lack of interest). > > Frequent posters with strong opinions about wanting avatars who were willing to fight for them for days on end in hundreds of posts weren’t willing or inclined to take 30 seconds to install a small script and update 1 line of their SDMB profile to actually have them. Are you talking about a picture of me in the profile space? Or when they talked about taking our pictures from the SDMB gallery and having them along side our posts. Because that wouldn’t have been an issue, as I already have a picture there. If you mean the grease-monkey script, I must confess, it seemed very confusing to me, so I opted not to use it. ☹ Also, I believe at the time, I wasn’t a member, and only members can have a picture in their profile. (Someone purchased me a membership, I have no idea who, or why) ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/190 "2012-06-20T01:20:38Z")
Nitpick: I am a luddite, NOT a ludite! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/191 "2012-06-20T01:35:46Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Are you talking about a picture of me in the profile space? Or when they talked about taking our pictures from the SDMB gallery and having them along side our posts. Because that wouldn’t have been an issue, as I already have a picture there. If you mean the grease-monkey script, I must confess, it seemed very confusing to me, so I opted not to use it. ☹ > Also, I believe at the time, I wasn’t a member, and only members can have a picture in their profile. (Someone purchased me a membership, I have no idea who, or why) This was a greasemonkey script that would just require you to type one line of text into your SDMB profile. You would just paste the URL to any image you have hosted anywhere and it would be displayed to anyone else running the greasemonkey script. Likewise you would see the avatar anyone else placed a URL to in their profile. The post below from the thread I linked earlier explains the format that you use or you can just see it in my profile. (you don’t need to know any of the technical details in the quote to use the script, that is all stuff the greasemonkey script would handle automatically. The only problem was that after finally arriving at this ingenious solution, nobody expressed any interest in using it and as far as I know \*\*Polerius \*\*never released the last update to the script to connect it to the user profile. The whole thing just kind of fizzled out and was forgotten due to lack of interest even though the avatar thread raged on for days. > [@Greasemonkey script to add your own SDMB avatars](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greasemonkey-script-to-add-your-own-sdmb-avatars/598062/66): > > Here’s a fun little thing I whipped up: A CGI which takes a numerical userid as a parameter and redirects to that SDMB user’s avatar URL, as found in the user’s profile (it first checks for an “SDMB Avatar: \” entry like [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/member.php), and if not, it returns the standard SDMB profile pic URL, which ends up being a 1x1 pixel white image if the user has no profile pic or if you’re not logged in. > > You can use it blindly for an \ tag like this: > > ```auto > > > > ``` > > (for the nerds: it grabs and parses profile pages on-demand, caching the found urls in a database. It won’t re-snarf a profile page if it’s gotten it within the past hour.) ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/192 "2012-06-20T01:52:36Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Are you talking about a picture of me in the profile space? Or when they talked about taking our pictures from the SDMB gallery and having them along side our posts. Because that wouldn’t have been an issue, as I already have a picture there. If you mean the grease-monkey script, I must confess, it seemed very confusing to me, so I opted not to use it. ☹ To be clear it puts a little postage stamp-sized avatar on each of their posts like regular, message board avatars. The profile information is a text link you add to your profile that points to a hosted image somewhere that you want to use as your avatar. The greasemonkey part is a piece of cake. It just requires installing greasemonkey (about 15 seconds) and pasting a single script in, and saving it. You never need to edit it or see it again. From then on you would see the avatars of any posters who also have added a line to their SDMB profile with links to their avatars. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/193 "2012-06-20T02:20:53Z")
> [@srzss05](#): > > I’m willing to concede that there would be some use. But it isn’t a very good argument (better than the non-avatar arguments, but that’s not really saying much). Why is it not a good argument if there is some benefit? I’ve been on forums that had partial avatar adoption and it definitely makes it easier to identify the posters that use it. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/194 "2012-06-20T02:28:03Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I continue to maintain, however, that only bad people use avatars. You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/195 "2012-06-20T02:36:13Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. I know I am but what are you? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/196 "2012-06-20T02:36:26Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Nitpick: I am a luddite, NOT a ludite! :mad: Ludites would be the devotees of a [certain brand of cough drop](http://www.ludens.com/products/wild-cherry). ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/197 "2012-06-20T02:40:05Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > This was a greasemonkey script that would just require you to type one line of text into your SDMB profile. You would just paste the URL to any image you have hosted anywhere and it would be displayed to anyone else running the greasemonkey script. Likewise you would see the avatar anyone else placed a URL to in their profile. > > The post below from the thread I linked earlier explains the format that you use or you can just see it in my profile. (you don’t need to know any of the technical details in the quote to use the script, that is all stuff the greasemonkey script would handle automatically. > > The only problem was that after finally arriving at this ingenious solution, nobody expressed any interest in using it and as far as I know \*\*Polerius \*\*never released the last update to the script to connect it to the user profile. The whole thing just kind of fizzled out and was forgotten due to lack of interest even though the avatar thread raged on for days. Ah, thank you. But, I don’t think that negates any of the arguments here, at least on the pro-avatar side. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/198 "2012-06-20T03:02:45Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Ah, thank you. But, I don’t think that negates any of the arguments here, at least on the pro-avatar side. I agree. I just find it hard to understand why so many people want avatars but so few will accept a simple workaround at least for the time being that allows us to have them right away, without pleading any case to TPTB. In the mean time by all means keep fighting the good fight against the irrational and unfair avatar phobia that makes such a workaround necessary but why not have avatars in the mean time, anyway? Until the day finally arrives, we can always fall back on Plan B: > [@Avatars](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/avatars/590594/325): > > We could always create [ASCII](http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/ascii.php?sample=mona)avatars. They are plain text so it would ensure that the intelligent discourse normally found around here wouldn’t be disrupted. That should appease the text-based purists and the 300 baud modem crowd. You have to walk before you can run. > > My text rendition of a crazy horse. > > …(}=79-8… > …?..p) 8… > …8:… …8… > …Z …8.. > …=O …6.67.8.. > …,.=,.=..?8,…6… > …,.=…6 … > …=…7… > …,.=8…?.:… > …-.8…O…=+…D… > ..\<8,…8 …=-=-…7,..8… > …8… .:…8..=i… > …7,..I=…o=…7.. > …8#…i=…{8o=…8.. > …U…i=… > …%I…8D… ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/199 "2012-06-20T03:39:17Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. Rats, I thought I was part of the precipitate… ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626/200 "2012-06-20T04:04:28Z")
> [@XT](#): > > What you have to ask yourself is…why do we need them? What do they add to the board that we are missing? > > -XT :dubious: So you agree that we don’t need superfluous identifiers that clutter up our posts? Having our usernames at the top of our posts should be enough, right? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-avatars-here-why/625626.md?page=11)