<snicker> Thanks. I needed that.
Here’s mine:
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You mean use the Something Awful method? Pay to post. You can be banned for any reason or no reason, but can get unbanned by paying again (unless you spam Goatse or something, then you can get permabanned). Pay money for avatar changes.
And the Pit can give you forum cancer, which will make you unable to post outside the pit, and you can pay to get rid of forum cancer.
ETA: Honestly, I don’t give a crap about avatars. But I do think IMG tags in Cafe Society, the Games Room, and GQ (for graphs, illustrations, mathematical equations etc) would be beneficial
Because I wouldn’t know a grease monkey if it swung in on a vine and lubed up my ass.
I LOLed several times on that one.
Intelligent discourse interrupted.
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Elmwood, do you do those by hand, or do you have a script that extracts the pixel data from an image and outputs an approximation it in VB tags? (I ask because I’ve drawn things with smilies and have toyed around with the idea of making a smiley art script, and you make a rather lot of those drawings leading me to expect that you have a script).
Wow, everyone here is so up tight about the issue. Worrying about every little possible situation that could happen, hating new ideas, and feeling the need to place strict regulations on everything.
Just lighten up. I don’t think SD will ever have avatars. but if it did it will not turn SD into some troll site like 4chan, there’s plenty of decent forums with avatars.
Honestly? Trying to change anybody’s mind that it won’t be the end of the world is fruitless. Every time image tags are brought up the standard objection has basically been “10 years ago somebody posted Goatse. I can’t unsee that. NEVER AGAIN.”
Ed Zotti, listen up. I’m voting with my wallet. Enable avatars on the SDMB for those with paid subscriptions and I will pay to become a full member, instead of freeloading with ads blocked like I do now. I am just one poster, but I’d bet there are others who would consider joining for that added value. It’s $ in your pocket, and all you have to do is check a box in the board settings.
… on another messageboard someone stole one of my photos and used if for their avatar without my permission directly as a personal attack on me. I messaged the forum admins requesting that they take it down: and once they confirmed my identity they had the avatar removed.
If the forum admins had not co-operated I was definitely prepared to take it to the next level (DMCA takedown) and while ultimately I doubt that I would have won a lawsuit (different countries, the images weren’t registered with the the US Copyright Office, fair use arguments, and the huge expense involved) I was certainly prepared to do what I could do to get my images taken down.
So yeah: it happens: but it is more likely to happen behind the scenes and you won’t hear about it.
No, but there is, I believe, a general resistance to change, and it’s my impression that this often kicks in before a proposed change has been properly considered or explored.
What changes? (I mean, I assume we’re not talking about changes to rules about what words are naughty, or what we can and can’t call each other, etc) A couple of new forum categories, a new smiley… Maybe I’m forgetting something?
Though to be perfectly fair, the vast majority of avatars are related to works by major corporations, and most of them either enjoy the free publicity or have better things to complain about like actual for realz pirating. I mean, I’ve seen companies as big as Nintendo ask people to share fan-made Zelda/Mario/Whatever avatars. Hell, a lot of webcomic artists make freely available avatars of their characters. I’m sure takedowns happen, but I’m sure 99% of the cases are cases like what Banquet Bear mentions where somebody uses an actual image by somebody not in good faith, rather than the majority of cases where somebody just uses a picture from a movie or video game they like.
Remember when we gained the “nested quotes” function? That was a change! And then it got disabled–another change! That’s two changes right there. Progress! Look out, 21st century, here we come…
I’ll cancel him out by not renewing my subscription, heh.
Bonus! 
But why would you not renew your subscription if the function and appearance of the board didn’t change at all for you?
Because you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere to fight avatar oppression.
Equalists! RAR!
What I’m taking issue with, is you repeatedly stating that there is something wrong with my logic or reasoning.
It’s fine for you to say you don’t think many people will use avatars, so the benefit that I’ve outlined won’t be realized in practice. That doesn’t make what I said illogical, flawed or irrational.
With each post you’re slightly climbing down on your use of language; better would be to just say “OK, there are no reasoning errors in your point. I was wrong to state that there were”.