The “optional” part has already been mention 12 or 13 times in this thread alone. As the OP has already requested, do the politicking in the other thread-just vote yes or no in this one.
My vote = yes to avatars.
It’s those pesky mirror neurons! We imagine what It’d be like to own our own message board, and we extrapolate further based on the infrequent occasions in which the actual board owner intervenes or makes his wishes known compared to his underling mods, and based on that we imagine that there might be some sort of logic or fairness in the way the board is run.
Further they join a board called the “Straight Dope” which preconceives them to expect some sort of truthfulness, honesty, and even, fair mindedness. Go figure!
Weird, right!?!
My vote = yes, too. Missed the time period.
Ooops. My mistake. The poll seemed closed a second ago.
Anyway, I would love to see avatars. It would be interesting to see what different personalities chose to highlight about themselves. Like would RickJay use a Blue Jay player or a comedian? Digoenes the Cynic (if he comes back) a viking, a packer/republican being beheaded, or just a megaphone… Who knows? And, that would be part of the fun.
I voted no. If I don’t want to have any fun, no one else should either.
I would be surprised and amused if RickJay had any avatar at all, based on his post in the avatar thread.
I voted no in the poll. I didn’t vote in the last poll because I felt less strongly about it. At that time, I felt it was pretty innocuous. As time goes on, I appreciate the focus at the SDMB on content more and more.
Yes, this is a long post. But this seems to be a major sticking point and I’m not sure it’s really been addressed.
I brought this up the last time we hashed through all of this and people jumped all over me. I’m sure I’ll be vilified again when I bring it up now. That’s OK… it’s a relevant point.
As pro-avatar folks have mentioned, images are very powerful. They pack a lot of punch. People’s attention is instinctively drawn to a picture on the screen before they look at the written words. But obviously people won’t *continue *to stare–mesmerized–at an avatar to the extent that they never get around to reading the post. On average, people would probably only glance at an avatar for a fraction of a second if they’ve seen it before. But we wouldn’t be human if a full-color image right next to a post didn’t affect our impressions of both the poster and the post.
If that avatar happens to be especially compelling/strange/novel/etc., then the effect is that much greater (and you can bet with the collection of brainy cut-ups we have around here there’ll be plenty of attention-grabbing, topical images).
But wait!!! Viewing avatars would be optional, right? Even if every avatar was extraordinarily unique and hypnotic, how would that be a problem? It’s optional!
Here is the problem: as already noted, images are very powerful attention grabbers. IMO, most people underestimate the effect the images would have on the conversations taking place in the threads.
Of course there would be the obvious distractions: e.g. the oooohing and ahhhhhing over Joe Poster’s cool new avatar; the booing and hissing when someone changes their avatar to Obama with Heath Ledger’s Joker face; the compliments over an attractive self-portrait avatar; etc., etc. All of that stuff will indeed get real annoying really fast to those who chose to turn avatars off.
First, because they can’t–and don’t want to–see what all the nonsense is about, and second, because it’s pretty thin gruel anyway, which only adds pointless, off-topic, meandering which we have enough of already.
But what I think people really underestimate is the subtle, almost invisible, yet ultimately devaluing effect of having Doper Set A participating in a thread while possessing rich* information that Doper Set B voluntarily wants no part of, but without which is at some degree of a disadvantage.
If your immediate reaction is, “Well, **Doper Set B **can *choose *to access the same information that Doper Set A has” then you help make my point which is: we really don’t want to look at all that silliness, and we *realllllly *don’t want to feel we have no choice but to look at all that visual glurge if we hope to follow all the spoken and unspoken undercurrents of a thread.
In other words, the anti-avatar Dopers would be left with an unpleasant dilemma. The choice between: having our screens cluttered with an ever-changing excreta of lolcats, celebrities, faeries, sports teams, and political slams, or, participating in threads without access to all of the information present.
Sometimes that information may be crucial to grasp all of a thread’s nuance, sometimes it will be far less than crucial. But to one degree or another, the discrepancy in information access will be present in every single thread.
*Even though avatars are, IMO, needless side-shows, the information is ‘rich’ because it is visual, and therefore possesses more and deeper data/meaning/affective potential than words. Even if their ‘richness’ is banal and unnecessary.
For a yes or no answer with no politics we can probably take that as a “no” but I can’t tell for sure.
But the argument that “we don’t want any part of it, unless it exists, in which case we want to be part of it even though we didn’t want to originally” isn’t very compelling.
As for the rest, if there were a genuine issue of people commenting on avatars to the detriment of a threads focus, that would be hijacking just as it would be now by interjecting other irrelevant points into a thread.
I voted yes even though I’m not sure if I’d bother turning them on.
Yes. It is a definite ‘no’.
In your second paragraph you have missed what I was trying to say. My argument is: “we don’t want any part of it”. Full stop. However if it DID exist then we still wouldn’t want any part of it, but we would have to confront the fact that there are nuanced undercurrents of the thread that we would not be able to fully understand unless we chose to view avatars, which we don’t want to do. Therefore the only reasonable thing to do is not allow avatars in the first place.
As for your last point, it is true that egregious, obsessive discussions about avatars might indeed be slapped down as hijacking of the worst sort: hijacking where half the thread participants don’t even know what you’re talking about.
But it is the subtle, barely discernible effects that the avatars would add that is the real problem because these subtle nudges in the conversation would fly under most everyone’s radar, yet still change the tone and direction of a thread. And avatar-refusers would never fully know what was being hinted about in the sub-currents of the discussion. They should not be penalized for having the good sense to block avatars, and yet they would be. Not fair.
That is the reason to simply not allow avatars for anyone at all, because “opting out” leaves you at a disadvantage, and opting in is for many posters, unpalatable to say the least.
There are no sticking points. There is nothing to be addressed. A humble doper will enter the thread, see the question, and if they like Avatars they will probably vote Yes, and if they don’t like avatars they will probably vote no. Simple.
“ATTENTION EVERYBODY, IF YOU VOTE NO YOU ARE AN IDIOT WHO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE INTERNET.”
Thats what you want to say isnt it? If so, have some balls and just fucking say it, and when you are saying it, try saying it in the ATMB thread, stop poisoning the well here.
Um…saying only 32% oppose is misleading. 32% said that they absolutely didn’t want them on, but another 22% said that they wouldn’t be bothered but also wouldn’t turn them on, so that’s over half the posters who’d want them off, and only 41% who do want them.
[Moderator Note]The OP has asked(in post #3) and I have also asked that you take the debate about this subject to the ATMB thread. The next person that tries to continue it here will get an official warning.[/Moderator Note]
You young whipersnapper! In my day we had 300 baud, and liked it!
You know, the tone of the Straight Dope changed in some subtle way when it moved from UBB to vBulletin. I can’t describe how it changed, exactly, or how much, but it did change nonetheless, and change is bad.
Don’t get me started on the great Trebuchet fiasco. Humanist san-serif typefaces are for intellectual midgets who need text that appear “friendly”, just like the text in a children’s picture book. The tone of the board certainly changed after that. How, I can’t exactly describe, but it did, as you would expect with such a juvenile typeface. There was nothing wrong with Verdana. I personally would have preferred Fraktur, the serious typeface of serious German intellectuals. Fraktur would also would have kept out the riff-raff who don’t have the patience to read it.
I also fought tooth and nail against a quote button back in the winter of '99, but Ed gave in to the newbies that registered in September and October of thta year. You should be judged based on your own words, and if you depend on those of someone else to make a statement, you’re an intellectual weakling. Did Descartes and de Saussure use quote boxes? Enough said. Since that quote button was added, the Dope became like any other message board of the time, and it all went downhill. I can’t tell how, but it did. All these quotes break up the flow of a thread. Why should I have to read what someone posted twice or more? If you can’t remember what they wrote earlier in the thread … well, you should be fortunate that you at least got accepted into a less rigorous safety school. Go Big Red, right?
I still think we should just read everything out loud; I don’t hold with this newfangled “writing everything down.”
I, for one, am opposed. I think they’re juvenile and pointless. In addition, I think that, rather than allowing for poster differentiation, they influence poster perception.
Then again, I’d be all for them if they were required to be a picture of the posters face. An honest identifier is better than any other thing. I also have, over the years, become in favor of the elimination of handles as usernames and would prefer that we used our real names for our usernames. Internet anonymity disturbs me.
Lest others accuse me of hypocrisy due to my use of a handle I offer this:
- At the time of my registering I hadn’t thought this through.
- It seems like a ‘sailed ship’
- I have posted my name on the board and other places.
- My name is shared (curiously) with a semi-famous musician, it’s unusual and I’ve been mistaken for him before, both on the boards here and in the staff report I wrote.
- A godawful number of members (both current and former) know me personally at this point and have been hosted at my home (both in Virginia and Ohio)
- I maintained this stance even during the time where my name, posts and opinions were public (even the extreme ones) and I was a candidate for public office and those could be used against me.
In short, anything that detracts or takes away from the actual identity (not ‘Online identity’) of the poster is a bad thing. One should have the courage to be who you are and not hide behind handles or pictures or whatnot.
I voted yes. Since the default would be avatars off, why the hell not?
Edited to add: This is all hypothetical, anyway, since Ed doesn’t plan to add them at present.
I don’t think I was misleading. “Only 32% actively opposed the option” is a true statement. The question being asked here is slightly different, though also less applicable imo.
[Moderator Warning]Infraction for failure to follow moderator instructions given in post #53.[/Moderator Warning]