I disagree.
I think the spacebattles.com site has a nice clean layout, and for the audience (sci fi fans) the color scheme/fonts/styling etc. look good.
But, they should move the post info (date time etc.) underneath the avatar, like the freeratio.com site.
That is an aspect I didn’t mention, but is valid as well. However, even though I think the recognizability reason is “lousy” (or “silly”), it is still better than the stupid arguments from the anti-avatar crowd.
ETA—missed this part:
They would be off by default. That is why the anti arguments are stupid.
Could avatars be unchangeable unless the mods allowed it? Kinda like username changes. Allowed but not very often perhaps?
Not realistically. The board would just be storing a link to the image, not the image itself. A person could easily make their avatar point to www.picturehostingsite.com/username/avatar.jpg, and then without changing anything on the message board, change what image they store under that filename. The only way around this would be to limit the choices of avatars from a list of files available from a list of sources, which would be more work for the Powers that Be and would restrict the creativity of the members.
EDIT: Not a real link
Avatars allow the teeming millions to differentiate themselves. This is a privilege paid that should be paid for.
What baffles me, is that with the obvious demand (the issue comes up over and over), Ed hasn’t tried to offer this as another revenue generator? Then again, TPTB would just screw it up by charging way too much so why bother.
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.
It would be reasonable to require membership if not for that small detail, but like I said these are all irrelevant details if the owner of the board personally despises avatars and their very mention makes his skin crawl.
I won’t do the math but obviously some people would have the same avatar. I don’t know how many “multiple posts per day” posters there are presently, but I’d guess no more than a couple hundred and probably less.
For two frequent posters to have the same avatar would have a small bonding effect, like having the same birthday or coming from the same medium size town.
I’ve posted at a sports board that offered a limited selection of administration approved avatars. Most people chose to use one, even though they weren’t unique to each poster.
I slightly prefer having no avatars, but have trouble justifying that if the software can make them not appear to people who don’t want to see them.
Ahhh. Makes sense.
I don’t give a rats ass one way or another about avatars but if they were allowed and could easily and constantly be changed I don’t really see the point and would argue they would cause more harm than good because it would be like posters that could constantly change their username. But I guess I’d just turn the things off so I couldn’t see em.
I guess it is worth pointing out at this juncture that we have a way, right now, within our own power, to enable a SDMB avatar system if we want one that does not rely on permission from TPTB.
**Polerius **was kind enough to create a greasemonkey script and **ntucker **generously wrote and hosted a CGI that, if combined with a small line in any SDMB user’s profile, would display an avatar of their choosing to other Dopers using the script.
It was a great solution, but surprisingly underwhelming demand after so many vocally requested avatars caused the project to sort of fizzle out. (note that I still have my SDMB avatar faithfully posted in my profile, just in case the idea ever takes off again).
Look, I can see you are trying to play devil’s advocate or be the intermediary or whatever in this thread, but no, there was no reasoning error on my part here.
I simply said, that in my opinion, avatars aid in keeping mental track of who said what in a thread.
Your supposed retort, which to you renders this silly (or now “lousy”), is that you don’t think that many people will post avatars.
Well, I can certainly see the error in your reasoning: you don’t get to add a contentious premise and then use that to pronounce that what I said is silly.
Be able to change is kind of the point. Your username is your identity. Your avatar is simply a visual expression. Kind of like wearing a button, or putting a bumper sticker on your car. Some will change it often, some rarely, and some never. Through it all the username remains.
Ok, how about we have avatars, but everyone has to use the same one. The admins can change it as they like. We might even have that now and they’ve chosen a small shaded circle that changes color when users are logged in.
But if it’s changing color whether one is logged in or not means the image is constantly changing which means I can’t keep track of who is who so therefore it is completely worthless. I suggest TPTB get rid of this rediculous avatar doo-hickey.
How about random Capchas (sp?) instead 
I said I won’t repeat myself, but here goes anyway:
Based on experience from other boards, and what other people on this board have stated, there are those that won’t use avatars, so the recognizabilty reasoning is flawed. If it only works sometimes, then logically its use is limited and so not a very viable reason. If you can’t see that, then I’m just wasting my time even stating it in the first place, let alone repeating it.
I see avatars here with a different script. But I am using your desired image for you now.
Look-problem solved!
Everyone o.k. with closing this thread?
Yes Czarcasm, you can go ahead and close it now.
The nice thing about the script/cgi/profile solution is that it would never require anyone to update their own copy of a script with avatar URLs. Every other script I know of requires each individual to keep their own list of avatars in their own copy of the script, but this system would automatically grab an avatar from the user profile and required no script editing or greasemonkey knowledge on the user’s part.
Which script are you using and is there such a mechanism in it?
Let me guess-this is an oh so subtle way of accusing me of junior modding, isn’t it? How quaint.
Is there a reason Crazyhorse’s answer to the problem isn’t satisfactory?
