Because Mommy and Daddy said so. Now shut up and eat your vegetables or you don’t get ice cream.
I think it would affect people in more ways than just the announcement. While neither of us can predict how things would go if it happened, from my experience on other message boards that have avatars, I think people who choose not to display avatars would still be affected by the change. You might say that it’s minimal, but it’s still affecting them more than you just described.
On other message boards, for example, there have been threads where people comment on other people’s avatars. There have been threads where people ask other people to change their avatar to an occasion or a theme. Sometimes these threads are done on a regular basis. There have been threads asking other people to change their avatars to play a joke on someone. There have been threads where people complain about other people’s avatars and ask the mods to remove them. There have been threads where people complain about someone’s avatar to ask them to change it without involving the mods. Those are just a few examples off the top of my head of threads involving avatars.
If threads about avatars would be disallowed here, then there would be more rules for people to follow that would have to be enforced, creating more work for the mods. If those threads are allowed, then although people can ignore those threads, those are just more threads that people who don’t have avatars enabled would have to ignore, so it would affect them.
I don’t care for the ways that avatars can be used to identify those people who are in a certain group or who read a certain themed thread because the people who are self-identifying can seem cliquish without necessarily meaning to be, and it also can seem exclusionary to some. It can look less inviting from the outside or to new people. It’s possible to create an environment where new people are less likely to join, perhaps inadvertently. I appreciate, based on the comments from the mods in these threads, that the SDMB is a place where new people are welcomed and that the environment being a welcoming one is valued.
Heh. I guess you missed the recent anal masturbation thread. Avatars could easily be one more way for trolls to walk up to the line and rub their chins.
We’re a team. Czarcasm is “Ed Zotti’s official Champion and Defender of All Things Possibly Detrimental To The Current State Of The Board,” and I’m “Ed Zotti’s official Champion and Defender of Everything Fucking Else.” 
And with all of that you still managed to avoid answering the question.
And, IMO, the ‘answers’ you did give are disingenuous. This board has changed it’s policy on such things many time. Zombie threads are one example. Some changes get tried and rejected - nested quotes, another example. You saying that you don’t want them because Ed doesn’t want them adds nothing to this conversation.
Well, there was change to the auto formatting of text in quote boxes, that removed the default italics. That was a good change.
There has been the addition of custom titles.
There was a massive increase in the PM count for everyone.
There has been the ability to reestablish Charter Membership for those who inadvertently lost it.
There is the Elections forum, that pulled out the whole category to satisfy the folks thinking it was ruining GD.
Automatic closing of zombie threads was reversed.
There was the removal of the Three Strikes policy and the activation of the formal warning tallying system.
I mean, how far back do you want to go? I’m not saying there have been HUGE ALTERATIONS, but there have been user-requested changes that have been implemented.
If one person includes an avatar that helps prevent ambiguity in one instance, that is a benefit to the person who wished to see avatars. The fact that nobody else included an avatar does not mean that one instance is negated.
This is debated. There is a vocal contingent who doesn’t want them, and a vocal contingent that does want them.
This is probably the most salient point. The owner doesn’t want them and won’t implement them. All the bruhaha going on in this thread won’t change that fact.
Not proven. At least a couple of mods have stated previously that they don’t care or would be okay with them.
Possibily. But for the few that do, they will have the opportunity, and the ones who don’t want them or don’t care won’t have to look at them, and won’t have to stare at an empty box image where one should be.
Because for the ones who want them, they feel their board experience would be enhanced. They can do this without changing the appearance one iota for those of us who don’t want them.
Couple points. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there is any requirement that you use a specific browser. Some browsers have greasemonkey built in, some require you to download it as an add-on, but it should be compatible with most browsers. Someone who actually uses greasemonkey would have to address if your preferred browser would work.
Hosting an image somewhere would only be required if you desire to have an avatar for yourself. And that would be required whether it is through the greasemonkey script, or through the board turning on the vB feature. You still have to host the image.
I will admit there are a couple three steps to being able to see avatars that you wouldn’t need if the board software implementation were activated, so that is a fair objection.
I do have to kinda agree with Heffalump and Roo about the change to the board experience as a whole, even those of us who don’t activate the button. For example, right now signatures are a feature that are allowed (for paying members IIRC), but can be off. (Defaulted off? I don’t remember.) I have them set to “off”, as I usually find them an annoying distraction, and they get annoying reading the same damn “witty” remark time after time. Even with the policy of only once per thread or whatever, it still is repetitive.
Normally, this has no impact to my viewing of the board. I can’t see that I’m missing out on much, and the benefit outweighs what I might gain in seeing a witty quote every once in a while (swamped with a bunch of stupid shit). However, every once in a while, someone will make a comment like
“Hey, I really like that post/sig combo” or “username/sig”. Or some other reference to the signature. Now then, in those admittedly few and rare situations, I must decide if I care enough to turn on sigs to find out what is being remarked on, or let it pass and ignore it. It’s a minor thing, but it is a thing.
I can only imagine that there would be similar instances with regards to avatars. Even if I overlook or bypass threads discussing avatars, or ATMB threads arguing about “why was my avatar disallowed?” or “Why is poopypants allowed to have that avatar?”, there would still be the occassional reference to avatars in threads, giving me the pause once again whether I am curious enough to go see what the fuss is.
Is that a huge deal? I suppose not. But it would be an impact to my experience.
My opinion: I doubt I would dig up an image to add (I haven’t bothered to put one as a link in my profile, why would I do so now?). I probably would leave avatars off, though might click the occassional profile to see them if they were brought in a conversation. Given that the default setting could be off, and that there wouldn’t be a “placeholder image” interrupting the viewing experience for those with avatars off, I can’t see how allowing avatars for those who want them with a default setting off is a big issue.
But Ed Zotti doesn’t want them, so they probably won’t happen. But it seems there’s a fairly easy solution for those who would like them. A baby steps thread showing how to set it up should make this issue moot. If someone significantly wants them, there is a workaround that is fairly easy to install, without requiring Ed Zotti’s approval or board resources.
Continuation of Hijack: If you didn’t register, the person you wanted to sue can register it before you did, then you are into major expense and, although you are likely to get your copyright back, you will be unable to sue over their use prior to that. This is from personal knowledge from a decade and change ago. A person in a Godzilla movie fan club made a pirate copy of a Godzilla movie in Japan that had not been released in the US, yet. He brought it here, and announced that he was going to show it at a Godzilla fan convention in NYC. The Japanese movie company said they’d sue if he did. He found out the copyright wasn’t registered in the US. He registered it. Then he showed it at the convention. I saw it, there (<spoiler>It’s a Bandai toy!</spoiler> ;)) The Japanese movie company took him to Federal court. The judge vacated his copyright, gave it back to the movie company, but refused to grant them any damages. Or court costs. Total cost to him: the registration price, and a couple of hours of his lawyer’s time. Cost to the Japanese movie company, tens of thousands in lawyer hour bucks. Benefit to him? He got to show his weeaboo mad hacker skillz at the convention. Cost to them? I and a couple of hundred other people saw the movie a few months before they would have released it. A few of us decided not to spend our money at the theater to see it again. Most did pay to see it at it’s official release.
I was there as a guest of a friend who was a close friend of the person who did that, so I heard the entire story first-hand. But I can’t testify in an actual court to any of this… [/continuation of hijack]
^I am actually trying out Crazyhorse’s Greasemonkey script now, it’s working fine. I’ve never used Greasemonkey before, but it was very easy to set things up in both Firefox and Chrome.
I am still of the opinion that avatars should be enabled (for “opt-in” users) in the board software,
Oops sorry about that. I walked through the entire process step by step as I wrote the instructions, but since I had already used greasemonkey it already knew my preferred text editor and didn’t ask.
You should be able to select any plain text editor (MS Notepad, Apple Text, etc.) at that point. If it still doesn’t work let me know.
There are about 5 people using the script at this point that I know of and it seems to be working pretty well.
I have noticed that occasionally someone’s avatar doesn’t load even though I know they have one, and I have to reload the thread a couple of times before the avatar appears. This may just be due to my slow connection but I’m looking at the script to see if I can figure out if anything in the code is causing the problem.
Generally, yes. If you think someone is junior modding (or, in fact, if you think someone is violating ANY of the rules or etiquettes), then the proper procedure is to REPORT them. For those unaware, that means clicking on the little ! in the red triangle at the upper right corner of their post, and writing a brief description of why you think it’s a rules violation. That assures that the mods will see it, and give them the ability to decide.
I can turn them off at your board, and when I do, it looks just like here, except for the color scheme. Now if only I could find a way to substitute your avatar with Pee-raffe’s, instead…
I got mine working, yay. It’s like an SDMB undernet.
As far as Ed not liking them, he never comes around anymore, except to make some announcements, and then it’s only in ATMB. So it’s not like he’d even encounter them much.
Yes, I know. I was pretending aceplace57’s question hadn’t been answered dozens of times before he/she posted. Because I’m super hilarious like that.
Actually if avatars were enabled you could just upload the image straight off your desktop, like an email attachment.
That’s really the people that admin’s truculence is hurting–people who would like to use avatars but find the whole scripting thing difficult. Nobody else is really affected either way.
All right…all right…but apart from auto formatting and custom titles and the PM count and reestablishing Charter Membership and the Elections forum and closing of zombie threads and removal of three strikes…what has the SDMB done for us?
Nothing!
The admins can enable it so people could host their avatars elsewhere, if they’re worried about bandwidth, or board performance. Photobucket and tinypic are both free, and super easy to use, and we could have ONE THREAD telling people “how to upload avatar”.
I’m just waiting for a variation of this scenario to emerge:
Avatars start getting used. Either legitimately or the Greasemonkey way. Then one day a racially charge thing that gets discussed/debated comes up. Let’s say Rodney King the 2013 version. Discussion get heated and finally one of pro-police (or pro racist depending on your point of view I guess) posters gets pissed and changes their avatar to something like a crying white baby in black face.
Oh boy, the shit starts flying and its off to the pit about this racist avatar.
Either Ed’s head explodes or I predict a very strict don’t ask don’t tell or you are insta banned for mentioning anything about someone’s avatar get implemented shortly there after.
The script is a great workaround but I’d still love board based avatars for the mobile version.