Well, I’m extremely biased for my own smilies, but I’m not going to vote for anything that I’ve submitted. I have principles, you know.
I really like #25, (hijack), and I think it beats the pants off of my pirate (#13). I also like #21 (yuk) and #20 (tinfoil hat). Dunce (#27) is well-designed, but I think it could be used too easily as an insult. Visible Pink Unicorn (#36) looks awesome, but I can’t imagine what it would be used for.
If I had to pick one of my own, I would go with #15, because I was a big fan of the rainbow smilie back at the temp board. It’s useful for expressing a lot of different concepts – psychedelia, gay pride, '60s counterculture, slackerdom, and just plain coolness, to name a few. Plus I like the pretty colors.
“Uhoh” would be a variant of :rolleyes: (which, IMHO, is overly dismissive).
Examples:
An infamous member posts another whopper.
:uhoh:
Somebody makes a dubious claim.
:uhoh:
Somebody makes an error in fact or logic. :uhoh:
My 2nd choice would be “Sherlock”, which I hope would be renamed as “Inspector”. It would be used when you are examining another poster’s ideas with additional rigor, and want there to be no heart feelings. Again, it’s an emotional softener. I would be especially useful with newbies, perhaps.
And to repeat what I’ve said before, the primary criteria should not be the attractiveness of the emoticon or even the cleverness of the concept. Rather, the proposed addition should be considered to the extent that it fights ignorance.
I think that the “dubious” supporters should decide which one to vote for beforehand so that the dubious vote doesn’t get split, in a Ralph Nader/Al Gore situation. Personally I like #30 because of the sideways grin, but would be willing to vote for #5 if that’s what everyone wants instead.
As the creator of several attractive and clever smilies that have nothing to do with fighting ignorance, I feel that I must defend myself. Fighting ignorance may be a priority here, but it’s not the sole purpose of the board by any means. An overwhelming majority of the fora have nothing to do with fighting ignorance (MPSIMS, Cafe Society, and IMHO come to mind), so why should the addition of new smilies be constrained by such a narrow criterion, especially considering that not a single member of our current crop of emoticons would be admissible under this restriction?
DP - at least I came up with a half-ass justification for the swiss smiley. Come on, defend your eyeball!
It could mean something like “I am taking a close look at your post.”
And if you put the two eyeballs together I’m sure some clever effects could be achieved. In other news, a few new submissions have made an appearance, and I combined the two “yuk” smilies. Would the two dubious authors care to combine their efforts?
One of the new ones, smack, is also mine. I’m not entirely happy with it. It’s supposed to look like a chagrined person striking themselves on the forehead (like Arnold referred to in a post above).
But the grimace on his face isn’t that good, and it almost looks like he’s being hit by someone else. While that could have its uses, it wasn’t what I was trying to do. If anyone thinks they can improve it before the total makes 50, go for it. If I like yours better than mine (which is highly likely), I’ll ask Arnold to remove mine.
For that matter, I hereby give blanket permission to anyone who wants to play around with my work (27, 28, and 39).
I didn’t have anything to do with the dubious smilies, but if you want to combine my whoosh with the other one you have my permission. If the other whoosh artist agrees, of course.
What about pirate and hijack? Are they similar enough for the same treatment?
I really like #25 (hijack), #31 (sherlock), #37 (pedant),
38 (lovestruck), and #39 (smacking forehead). Also #17 over #6 for evil, and SMASHIE! #21’s yuck isn’t half bad either. And rainbow, and tinfoil! I just can’t decide…
Of all these, though, I think Sherlock/Inspector would be the most useful. It could even be used in the same spirit as the Pedant smilie, kind of like “you’re/I’m being too picky” or something.
I would vote for the Martian except I think the emoticon could be improved.
[quote] Originally posted by Devilman Parker
The eyeball represents the canonization of existential Anti-Utopianism in the postindustrial bourgeoisie.
[quote]
:Smacks head: (#39) Of course. And I always feel that way, but can’t seem to put it into words.
Go eyeball!
Yeah, sure, combine the 2 dubious icons. (And, for that matter, award co-authorship to Devilman Parker on #30).
uhoh Lobbying:
:uhoh: can not only function as a variant of :rolleyes: , it also can indicate a milder :o . It can even denote, :iamanidiot: . I still haven’t been able to track down the author though.
Go uhoh!
Anti-fun lobbying: (boo! hiss!)
The problem with letting in fun icons is that there are a lot of them. Now it’s one thing if you want to offer users a selection of 30 mini-drawings or more. Otherwise though, I’d rather rate the icons primarily on the basis of their use.
(Mods: Does vBulletin allow different smilie pallettes for different categories? Perhaps MPSIMS could get a full 796 choices for smilies. While GD could get… 14 or so.)
I’m the perpetrator of the purple whoosh, and I suppose it would be a good idea to combine them the same way Fenris’ two yuks were. It’s gotta be one or the other, I suppose. So I give my permission to combine them too, if Arnold agrees.
flowbark, you know that animated smilies aren’t allowed, right? I’m mentioning it because I’m not sure that smilie will be as expressive without the shifting eyes. Why don’t you try making your own (static) version?
I kind of like the Pirate (#13), the Dunce (#27), and the Smack (#39). The latter two would be perfect, as someone said, for those occasions when you realize you’ve made a gross error in spelling/grammar/logic/etc. just the moment after you hit “submit.”
Of the choices for Dubious, I prefer #5. I’m not sure why, but it just seems to convey the feeling better.
But, when all is said and done…I’ll probably have to vote for Smashie. I just love that little guy. (Although I still maintain, as I lobbied for unsuccessfully at the temp board, that he should be called “Bonky”.)
Loopus, Saltire, Devilman Palmer, thank you for graciously agreeing to combine your efforts. At this point I will make an executive decision and say that any two smilies representing the same “emotion” will be combined. So tonight I will combine the two “evils” - 6 and 17, the two “dubiouses” - 5 and 30, and the two whooshes - 28 and 29. IMHO pirate and hijack are different enough that they can remain separate.
flowbark - I don’t think you can do mini-palettes. In any case, let me explain a little further why we limited the number of smilies to be added to one at a time. When the moderators were polled, adding smilies won by only a slim margin. Very few spoke out strongly in favour of new smilies, and more than that were adamantly opposed to adding any, with some suggesting we get rid of all of them. We have also seen mixed feelings at the SDMB, with some posters saying that the smilies represent the end of intelligent discourse, and others saying that they’re harmless fun. If I went ahead and added 700 smilies my head would be handed to me on a platter. In addition, to add smilies, we have to e-mail them to the IS staff at the reader, and we try to bother those people as little as possible.
BTW - the OP says “we have three or so days to prepare for the new smiley poll”. That was when I thought we had reached the limit of 50 submissions. But due to one poster withdrawing his/her submissions it looks like the polling will start a few days after the original submission deadline (24 May 2002), unless we reach 50 submissions before then. The few days’ delay will be to give the other moderators the opportunity to veto any last-minute submissions that they think are not acceptable at the SDMB.
All this talk about “ambivalent” and no one was talking about the smiley for ambivalent (#16)
Fooey.
In the days when the only “smilies” were the ASCII emoticons, we used :Z as a wry face like you see in the sunday comics. I guess it isn’t really ambivalent so much as it is just wry, but you know the face I’m talking about. (Yes, I submitted that one, if that were not already obvious)
I like the hijack with the knife in the teeth (#25); I think we really need the laughing smilie (#10); I’m another fan of yuk (the second one, preferably); dubious (the #30 version); and I really like the late submission, the smack smilie (#39).
).
Come on, defend your eyeball!
All this talk about “ambivalent” and no one was talking about the smiley for ambivalent (