I’m into PC games and anime, and one of the similarities between gaming and anime forums is often being able to have avatars and also banners. I’ve seen some beautiful photoshopped banners out there.
This board is a very nice place to visit but it also feels painfully bland. The greys, whites, and blues of the board can sometimes feel a little depressing. There are so many creative and artistic people here, I’m sure it would be a great opportunity for them to express themselves!
Avatars and banners would slow this board down to the point of molasses in January.
Yes, slower than it is already.
Tripler
Besides, IMHO, an avatar and banner-free board makes me focus more on the content of the posts more than the pretty colors.
Yeah but maybe they could just put a limit on searches…I’ve heard that one reason the board is so slow is because people run searches (busy proving each other wrong/right…perfectly understandable I guess). If they put some kind of time limit on the number of searches at a time, then maybe that would make up for it.
Also, the boards I go to, the images load after the page does, so you can see all the text. Also, maybe they could make an option to make the banners and stuff visible/not visible, so your comp could browse the board faster if you wanted to.
Just a thought.
The day the SDMB becomes like all of the shlock-laden bannered/avatared fluffy bunny sig boards on the web is, I hope and pray, the day that hell freezes over.
But Avatars are very useful! For one thing, they really help me recognize other posters. This prevents committing a social faux-pas to a poster I mistake for another poster…plus since we can’t edit the posts I’m sure tons of people have awkward misunderstandings.
Okay I know I’m grasping at straws here, but there is just this depressing visual blandess that I wish could be made into something pretty.
Let me add – with apologies for the double post – that avatars and banners serve absolutely no purpose other than cluttering up the board. Searches serve a very meaningful purpose, and represent the key way that many members navigate the boards.
If you want board clutter, there are a million places to find it. This ain’t one of them.
:eek:
Missing form,
Poetgrrl proposes
Missing function.
Denying beauty,
turtles gasp for air
and expire.
Look in the top left corner of each post. You will see a name in bold print. Each doper has a unique name. Pay attention to the names. Problem solved.
Let me get this straight. You want to put a limit on searches for all that boring stuff, like facts an’ that, so people can have Photoshopped cyberpunk-style banners or an avatar of a blue Japanese rodent?
Hell yeah, sounds good. There’s a real shortage of that kind of stuff elsewhere on the net…
Apologies for the facetious tone. I’m really quite a pleasant person. If I had an avatar it would be a koala 
A mean, vicious, dangerous marsupial?
If we had avatars the SD would look like lj, a boobie gallery.
Once you’ve been around for a while, and have realised how slow the boards can get you’ll underst.and why there are no banners etc.
The reasons we don’t offer you more of those goodies have to do with our basic attitudes, our experiences, and our server.
We do think that the emphasis should rightfully be on the content; it’s the steak, not the sizzle. There’s not much flying bologna, to be sure.
In the past we have let people upload images and such; we had to stop that because of abuse. You can only see so many goat’s ass pictures and so much copyright violation; we could not let that stand.
Much of what we could offer (such as avatars) is quite system intensive. We have chosen to maximize what resources we have for what truly counts, which is making posts. There’s just no leftover for extras.
This may change in the future as we have more to work with and potentially more to offer. However, for at least the time being, this is what prevails.
Your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Even if the Chicago Reader had infinite resources, I’d hate the see this board become garish eyesores like those other boards with avatars, banners, and imbedded graphics.
If you want fluffy bunnies or biker nun pictures, paste one onto your screen, don’t inflict it on the rest of us.
Although, I would like a policy that allowed graphics only if they were to illustrate a point.
Oh, we can be colorful here without the use of graphics. 
'Twould be nice, but a headache to enforce, I’d wager. And we’d still have the resource-drain problem. Most of the features we’ve enabled here are specifically useful in the fight against ignorance, but graphics lend themselves to fluff quite as readily.
At worst, you can always upload a graphic to your own web space and link to it.
I’ve got a better idea. Remove the graphics and avatars on all the other boards to make them look more like the SDMB.
I’ve gone to a few gaming boards, and I didn’t stick around because I got tired of all the competition…not competition as to who had the best posts, but as to who had the best banners, avatars, etc. I found it hard to get the gaming information that I wanted in all that fluff. THIS message board is about knowledge, not about who is the best photoshopper.
I think it’s extremely poor form to burst onto a message board (chat group, mailing list) and immediately request or demand that it be made over into something else. THere’s literally thousands of other message boards out there, if you don’t like this one, there’s bound to be one that you DO like. If not, then start your own.
Here here. (Or hear hear. Take your preference)
That was worth repeating.
When I suggested limiting searches, I meant the same kind of timer flood-control has. That way one person (or a group of people) wouldn’t be bogging down the boards from constant searches.
I really like this message board. It just kind of bums me out that I have to pick either style or substance. As for the people who don’t like banners and stuff, that is perfectly understandable, but I don’t see why you couldn’t also have an option to disable on your own computer, so you don’t have to see them.