I’m on a few boards that use avatars. I have them turned off. What happens is that the avatars become part of the board culture, part of what people talk about in threads. So I turn them on. They’re a bit on the large side, some of the images annoy me, and I’m often on a limited-bandwidth connection (as I am right now, in fact… one of those EVDO cellphone-network based broadband cards for laptops, better than dialup of course but still a far cry from DSL & cable speeds) and downloading unnecessary pix seems wasteful.
Yeah, mark me down as a spoilsport. I’d really rather that the board simply didn’t have them.
If we are going to have them, I’d want a much smaller max pixel-by-pixel size than the board software natively supports. Something the size of a smilie, perhaps.
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Yes, actually this does seem closer to the actual arguments on both sides.
Assuming they are default off, optional on, no animations, not too large, don’t tire out the hamsters and perhaps are discouraged from changing very often. I don’t see any negatives.
Major positive being it’s easier for us folks who need some kind of visual to form memories of identities.
People who want them can have them and people who don’t want them will never have to see them. Seems like a win-win to me.
Interesting how the results so far of the various polls seem to differ widely based on whether they are default off.
I’ll also mention, some are the arguments are based on WORST POSSIBLE CASE SCENARIO. Having avatars can be done in such a way as most of the things people are afraid of are easily avoided. I think “No avatars, because they would do X” people should stop and think about their response and change it to “No avatars unless X is averted”.
I’m typing aren’t I? I’m not making little rebus puzzles in wingdings for people. Are you laboring under the misapprehension that those of us who want avatars would prefer to go without typing permanently? If so, I don’t know where you got that idea as it is eminently silly. I really don’t understand your objection on this issue.