Here is a question for you (I doubt you will answer it, but it’s worth a try):
If the avatars are off for you, how does that impact your desire for verbal discourse?
You can see the logic in that question, right? As an outside observer, your position seems not only illogical, but it seems that you don’t see that it is illogical either.
I have illogical opinions - but I’m aware of them.
What does this phrase even mean??? I hear it all the time on the Dope, usually seeming to imply in some hi-falutin’ way that the reader is dumb, or something.
What else does on read for? Doritos?
A brown grocery bag. With holes cut for the eyes to peek through.
I view an avatar as the “face” of the person posting-the image that person wants associated with the name. Unfortunately, unlike a real face which has expressions that change when the conversation changes, an avatar stays the same no matter the mood of the poster or the topic of conversation. It is nice to see a small picture of a kitten when the topic is pets, but slightly jarring when the topic is waterboarding.
Yes, but if you have avatars turned off, how will this affect you?
Will references to these avatars be blocked also? I guess I would prefer that everybody on the board be on equal footing when it comes to topics of conversation.
So are you equally opposed to signatures? I have sigs turned off, for example, so if there happened to be a reference to someone’s signature in a thread, I would be in the dark about that reference.
Also, how do you feel about ad-blockers? I have AdBlock for Firefox installed, so I don’t see the Google ads, etc., that other people sometimes talk about.
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But they aren’t as it is now. Not everybody has the same level of interest and knowledge in every topic that is discussed on the board.
Don’t particularly like avatars, and hate smilies - call me old-fashioned, but i like to see words instead of pictures on a discussion board.
I do think it would be good to have a separate thread category where people could post photos, artwork, etc. when I am in the mood to look at art or upload something I did in Photoshop or Illustrator - but otherwise, it starts to look like a mini-Facebook with all the little doodads.
I agree – everyone should upload multiple versions of their avatar, one for each emotion, and choose an appropriate one when posting.
I’ll get started on the sarcasm version of my snarf gif.
(Obviously I’m just kidding. Personally I just want something to make it easier to associate who said what in a thread, and facilitate finding stuff by scrolling, rather than having to Ctrl+F all the time.
I’d be happy if, say, there were a handful of abstract images hosted on SD and all you could do was pick one).
But everyone has equal access to all the topics on this board. There are people posting on this board that have less than optimal internet access speeds who won’t get to decide whether or not to use avatars-they will be forced to shut them off out of necessity. Before I had a decent internet connection there were message boards I avoided for just this reason.
So do you feel the same way about signatures and ad-blockers?
I don’t think sigs slow down load time, and most everyone has access to ad-blockers. This is about adding a process that, for some, will adversely affect load time if turned on. They don’t get to choose whether or not to use it. By necessity they almost have to leave it off.
OK, but only if I get to be the top hat.
I see.
Well, speaking as someone who, by virtue of having ads blocked, has very occasionally had to skip a conversation about the Google ads on a particular page, I feel safe in saying that I don’t think this problem of “an extremely small percentage of SDMB users who are still using 28K dial-up will be forced to turn off avatars and therefore will not be able to participate in avatar-thematic conversations” is really that significant.
You know, I’ve read and posted at a lot of boards that allow avatars. Pretty much the sum total of conversation regarding the avatars is stuff like “hey, love your new avatar!” Every once in a while, someone will start a thread for the purpose of discussing the avatars, but those threads are easy to avoid (the way one might avoid threads about baseball…by reading the titles and skipping over them if you think it looks boring/stupid/irrelevant). It’s not really a hardship.
It sounds like you’re trying to contrive a situation where this causes a problem for someone.
I mean, really, someone is seriously going to be thinking: “Oh no, I have to leave off an option that’s turned off by default, because of my slow internet connection! Leaving it off means I won’t understand any comments w.r.t. avatars. This is for some reason worse than not being able to open the youtube links or whatever that people post up and discuss. I wish they’d never allowed anyone to use avatars…”
Okay, so the latest argument against anyone having avatars is that some people wouldn’t be able to choose whether to see them or not.
Which is completely unlike now with our tons of choices about whether to have them.
Jesus :rolleyes: