Poll: More "smilies" or none at all?

In My Humble Opinion
1

From this thread in ATMB.

Some members seem to want more of those stupid “emoticons.” Personally, I hate the things. You know what I’m talking about.

We have the “ginning idiot”: :slight_smile:

The “dork”: :cool:

The “I’m about to puke”: :o

The "punch me in the face, I dare ya’ ": :smiley:

And the “complete friggin’ idiot”: :eek:

And so on.

I find these useless things to be incredibly annoying, and propose that we eliminate them entirely. I believe I can summarize the “pro” and “con” arguments succintly.

[ul]Pro-smilie: They add emotional content, much like facial expressions would in face-to-face contact.

Con-smilie: It’s a text-based medium, dumbo. If you can’t make yourself clear with only the alphabet to work with you need to go back to school.

Pro: That’s fine for multi-page pieces where irony and sarcasm can be understood from the context, but we only post a few lines at a time. I want my fellow members to understand my intent.

Con: You happen to be completely missing the point, dipstick. If you can’t make you sarcasm obvious in three sentences, just don’t try. The other members here are pretty smart people. Odds are, they’re smarter than you. If they don’t get the joke it’s most likely that you screwed it up.[/ul]

What do you think? Do we need more “smilies,” should we just keep the ones we have, or should we get rid of them entirely.

I think you all know where I stand. You also know that I don’t know how to work the “poll” function.

2

Where did that bullet come from?

3

For some reason, your entire Pro, Con, Pro, Con progression is set up as an unordered list, with the entire series as a single list item.

4

I don’t mind them as long as they are actually useful on occasion (unlike the happy orthodox Jewish guy) and as long as they’re not the moving graphics like many other boards have.

Oh, and I HATE the putz smilie… screws with the line spacing. They can introduce anything but a smilie that does that.

5

More. This isn’t a text-based medium, it’s a text & smiley based medium. Anything that aids communication is OK by me. If someone can’t make their sarcasm obvious, I have no problem with them using a smiley helper.

6

More smilies, please. Some people use them excessively, but the rest of the board can just shun them/beat them with sticks. As long as it helps get someone’s point across, then why not? And as much as I love the happy orthodox jewish man, he isn’t used that often. And when he is, it’s out of context. Are there any God smilies? Any smilies that look like Orson Welles?

7

I say we definitely need to keep :D, :smack: and :rolleyes:.

I don’t really like the look of :dubious:, but the idea isn’t all that bad.

I think we should get rid of :cool:, ;j, :wally, and :o (or at least change that last one a bit). Also, I think Dopers are pretty well versed when it comes to expressing anger, so :mad: is out, too.

I’m kind of on the fence with the rest of them but I will say I don’t entirely hate :eek:.

As far as adding more… eh, whatever.

8

:eek: is my very favourite. Please don’t get rid of :eek:.

9

I think the current number of smilies is fine, but some of them could be changed to be more clear. :stuck_out_tongue: , for example, is too cheery for my tastes (it should be more of an angry “Hey, you idiot!” look), and :o is too yawn-like to be any good.

10

I vote for keeping:

:slight_smile: - Standard, canonical smily
:rolleyes: - Why bother writing a paragraph when you can just use this, invaluable against trolls
:dubious: - My favourite smily. I often curse that IM doesn’t have this one. A bit milder than :rolleyes:
:smack: - Again, a smily that can convey an entire paragraph
:wink: - Standard, canonical winky smily
:smiley: - Standard, smartass comment
:confused: - like :rolleyes: without the hostility
:eek: - Just damn cool
:frowning: - Standard, sad smily
:mad: - standard, angry smily

I think these should be modified:

:cool: - Should get some sunglasses that look good.
:stuck_out_tongue: - based on the text version, I alway figure it to be someone sticking out their tounge on the side of their mouth, as if considering something.
:o - This was never embarrasment for me, should be a more mild form of :eek:

11

I hate smileys. If people knew how to use them effectively I probably wouldn’t hate them. Probably 80% of them are unnecessary.

12

I like smileys, when used in moderation. I often have this IRL problem where I’ll be making a joke, but if I don’t smile broadly while saying it, people take me too seriously. I figure if that’s the way my sense of humor works, it could be even more off putting in written form. The smileys help me make sure that the correct emotional tone is conveyed. I will agree, though, that they’re sometimes overused; and be grateful to whatever God you may believe in that we don’t have those hideous animated ones!

13

I like smilies, but I hate random bullets and lists in posts. :wink:

14

I used to whole-heartedly agree with the OP and I never used them at all.

Over time, however, I found that comments I was making in jest were, upon occasion, being taken seriously and pissing people off. I’ve since started using the smilies and haven’t had problems since. Although, I do feel kind of silly (and somewhat defeated) when I used them- it’s almost the exact same feeling I had when I started using the word “Y’all” after five years of living in Louisiana, I wanted to resist but it just became fultile.

15

There are plenty of smilies, in fact probably too much. Why, because you need a frickin’ guide to what they mean now. A few simple ones, and just about everyone knew what was what. Now you have to have a guidebook or translator, and that becomes irritating and leads to less clarity and more ignorance.

Here’s an example, what the fuck does :o mean? In this thread alone, one poster has it as “about to puke” another as “mild form of embarrassment.” Maybe it stands for a Homer-esque Doh! Kinda looks like getting kicked real hard in the ass. Or does it stand for a hummer. That’s cool, given all the sex threads, every time you see one of these :o it stands for a blowjob. Figure out how that makes sense in context.

We have more than enough of these emoticons now IMHO

16

I think we are OK with the ones we have. We don’t need to go filling posts up with silly graphics that take away from actual reading material.

On the other hand, I would really be interested in seeing designs for an SDMB-original “Og” smiley.

That would be nifty.

17

We need a “yucky” smilie for TMI threads.

18

WTF is the problem with this guy :o ? It’s obvious it’s a yawn, a frickin’ yawn people. The eyes are closed and the mouth is yawning. The filename for it is ‘redface.gif’, so that’s a bad description. It’s not blushing or mad, it’s a yawn.

;j Looks like a frickin’ spider, get it the f*** out
Keep the rest and add some more.

19

I think they’re useful, up to a point. Some of them are not wysiwyg, though. If you hold your cursor over each smiley, a box gives you an explanation. Embarrassment :o is not readily apparent. It looks like boredom or something. I like the little jewish guy, ;j but how often can a WASP use it? “Putz” is not in my working toolbox of words, so I rarely use the Wally. :wally

I’ve seen message boards with a panoply of smilies, many of them irritating animations, and most of them useless. I’d hate to see us go that way. It’s hard to take a post seriously when it’s filled with creatures that never stop jumping, laughing, and rolling. :rolleyes:

20

They might be mildly useful in some rare instances but I still hate the frickin’ things. They’re the on-line equivalent, even visually, of an infestation of Japanese beetles: annoying, everywhere and jarring.