Yes please. Never gonna happen, though.
:shrug:
I remember Barfy being a pretty popular smiley. Animated and everything.
I did. He was cute for about ten seconds, then served as a distraction.
Anyhow I could probably grudgingly deal with non-animated avatars, but I suspect there are still issues of copyright and moderator time that would have to be worked out before any user provided images show up here.
I would not want the board to have avatars.
I would be OK if graphical smileys were done away with — we could still use 
and 
and :o and so forth just like we did when ASCII text ruled the internet. (And they would serve the same purpose of conveying mood and intent)
Eeek! Then we’d have people madly posting dribble. “Only 83 more posts 'til I can use my custom avatar!” I’d rather see a time limit than a post count.
The other place a time limit (or membership requirement) makes sense is for the Pit. You want to participate in GQ or GD or MPSIMS? Great! C’mon in! You want to post in the Pit? Be a member for a while first. Get to know the place. Let’s not have guest drive-by pittings.
The other problem with avatars is copyright. Because the SDMB is very particular about that, things like a Simpsons character could not be used. They’d have to be limited to those provided by the SDMB or personal photos.
On the bright side, they could license some images from Slug!
I’m sure you’re not weaselly limiting this to “general questions” type boards, so I’ll point out that the official vB site has simple avatars and is quite “dry”, just like you like it. Can you point out some websites besides the SDMB that are equally barren and yet awesome in answer quality?
Personally, I really disagree strongly with the anti-avatar crowd, even though I don’t really need them. It would help the place look less decrepit, which they see as staid or comfortably dry. eta: I also like the point that humans are visual and like having a visual reminder of who posted something.
In addition to my vB example, I should also mention Something Awful’s Ask/Tell forum.. I’ve mainly only seen/heard good things about it. It certainly is a messier experience (and they seem to have a problem keeping the forums focussed) and probably not for you, but there are intelligent people commenting and answering.
There’s even a “Ask the Transexual” thread on the front page which seems to be going along fine without a million 13 yr old boys coming in to say “Grooosss!”.
Putting avatars on a board where a sizable minority wants nothing to do with them means that those people will not be remembered as well by the people who say they need avatars. I like the fact that people here know my personality from my words (and smileys 
), and it would be an ego hit to find that the majority of new posters think of me and a couple other Dopers as “those guys without the avatars–what’s his shtick again?”
FTR, Exapno Mapcase, I’m right there with you and I spend a lot more time in MPSIMS than GQ. FWIW.
Not really. Smileys–a small number of them, as the Board currently has–contain meaning and substitute for what is normally conveyed by tone in spoken English.
Actually, I’ve had quite a bit of ignorance fought in IMHO and MPSIMS. Those who venture outside of the MMP can find lots of interesting information about peoples’ lives and experience that can teach them a lot.
What if a new poster gets Pitted? You’re saying that s/he should be completely unable to defend him/herself?
What if that new poster has something worthwhile to say about something going on in his/her community, and s/he is the only one who can say it?
Plus lots of kitty pics and Mafia games. The fact that you are able to have ignorance fought once in a while in the fluff forums doesn’t remotely counter Una’s point. This isn’t merely a forum for research paper groupies anymore.
Thanks to those who answered what a custom title was. I’m sorry, as I finished reading through the thread I forgot who you were, but I appreciate it! Personally, I kinda like having “Charter member” up there, but I can see the appeal. You can do that now with Location though, so what difference does it make?
Man, no kidding!
If we’re voting though, I say no avatars. It would change the fundamental look of the place, which is one of the things that makes the SDMB stand out from other message boards. I have nothing against avatars and use them on other message boards I participate in, but here, I like the clean, classic look and even if I turned them off, they’d still be there if I were reading without logging in.
One other thing, with so many people saying they wouldn’t mind paying extra, that frightens me a little bit. I pay for here because it’s my favorite message board, but I was guaranteed a rate when I first signed up, that would stay static as long as I kept my membership up. I don’t want to see that rate raise. If I have money at one point or another, perhaps I’ll buy a t-shirt or whatever, but please don’t raise charter member’s rates. Have a donation checkbox if people want to pay extra and they’re able. I’m not cheap, but I’m poor.
Oh, and no rating system. Please god, no rating system! I don’t want to feel like I’m back in high school.
I don’t think that’s true. Charters were guaranteed half price not $7.50. I still agree that all this “Please take more of my money!” is extremely off-putting though.
Oh, yeah, the rating system. Horrible idea. People would be abusing it for personal reasons all the time. No way would it be a measure of a poster’s “reliability”.
I am truly sorry, I was not yelling, it was not intended to be yelling. I wanted it to stand out as I think many posters were not aware the option is already in place.
The avatar things has come up a lot this week and this might be the 8th time I have mentioned that they could be turned off. I was just try to make the fact eye-catching.
I am very sorry.
While I am at it, I would like to mention that it is worth checking user options.
[not yelling] We now have the ability to display up to 200 posts per page. This is a recent and very welcome change by **TubaDiva ** and I think it is great. Especial in these very large threads.
Ellis Dee, I think this one little guy has prevented more anger than anything else on the board. I am not a very good writer. I jest a lot and I find it hard to give the written word a tone and appearance that a smile or laugh does in talking. So while it might indicate I am not a good writer or a lazy one, the smilies do help communication quite a bit. If they did not exist, I would probably still need to include instead.
We have posters that cannot even master the shift key, so it is not as if the writing standards are all that high. Mainly we attempt and encourage proper spelling and grammar and brutalize those that bring leetspeak to the boards.
It is very easy to misread intent or tone in the written word. Please see above between Shayna and I.
Jim
The user reputation system isn’t bad per se, it’s just pointless. At most sites I go to it’s basically used as a way for others to “LOL” at a good post. I don’t think it would be any less pointless here.
It would serve to formalize my status as a superior being, which as far as I’m concerned is all the justification it requires.
We do? And how is this accomplished, O wise one? I looked in User CP.
Regards,
Shodan
User CP | Edit Options | Number of Posts to Show Per Page
You should be able to make your selection from there. Be sure to save any changes.
Thanks!
working the scroll wheel gleefully
Regards,
Shodan
If this forum exist to fight ignorance it seems like a lot of people really just want it to be a Mensa hang-out.
I find animated avatars annoying, but I am not against avatars in general. My biggest concern is copyright violation, and how the mods would have to spend more time telling people to get rid of their avatars and the acrimony over what some would find inappropriate.
HOWEVER, saying that avatars and smilies are a sign of a childish, or lazy mind is elitist, and IMO, utterly wrong. I belong to some forums where the people are very smart (sure they cater to a niche), where I have learnt a lot and yet they are aesthetically pleasing. Ugly is not a sign of intelligence. You can have a very subdued, elegant skin that enhances the experience without interfering with the written word.
Whose ignorance will we fight if nobody ever comes here? The younger crowd expects a visual experience, and I am convinced not everyone in this demographic is a moron. That’s just how it is. The web is evolving, we must evolve with it. It doesn’t mean that we must adopt every crappy, annoying thing that comes up. In fact design is moving towards more subdued tones, more empty spaces, cleaner experience (anyone has noticed Amazon and eBay just changed their front pages?).
Avatars can be turned off by forum. We could even have a zero-graphics skin just for GQ and GD, but I don’t see why it is so bad in the other fora.
It was indeed. My apologies. I read your final statement as a very definite one, but now that you point it out, I do see the caveats.
A word of advice, if I may: disclaimers offered as asides are easy to overlook. As postscripts, not so much.
ETA: Shayna’s post is a good case where a smiley would have helped me get the emotional tone. I don’t know whether she is ribbing me pleasantly, being sarcastic about my lack of perception or genuinely hurt and offended. Text-based communication is a very flat medium, and anything we can do to enhance it helps a lot. Even those who claim to be able to infer emotional intent, or to be very good at communicating it themselves, have a high failure rate when doing so.