TR Forums

toxent · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:03 pm

I was just curious as to why we don't use avatar pictures on these forums. I've been to other forums and lots of them use avatars. It seems to be a fairly popular practice.
Any word on why this isn't done here?

Usacomp2k3 · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:07 pm

viewtopic.php?t=32091&highlight=avatar
A couple worthy quotes:

Steel wrote:
It would just be one more thing that would have to be policed on the forum. And after seeing the mess some other forums have become with their gigantor animated avatars, we're better off without them.

FireGryphon wrote:
Avatars are cool, but TR looks more mature and professional without them. I like TR without avatars.

PRIME1 · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:20 pm

I have noticed a lot more sig pics lately.

blitzy · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:21 pm

in my never humble opinion theyre a waste of bandwidth, some people do seem to enjoy them though.

a good way to implement them, if ever, would be to have it as part of a forum profile option whereby the default profile is set to omit avatars from display. each member has an avatar field in their profile that they can use to link to an avatar of a specific size, and if a person wants to make avatars on the forum visible to them they would have to enable displaying them in their profile options. so it's opt-in rather than opt-out.

disclaimer: i have no idea what phpBB is capable of or whether this type of thing is possible while still being able to limit peoples avatars to a certain pixel width

bhtooefr · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:26 pm

Hmm... I don't see a hide avatar feature on a phpBB forum that I'm an admin on...

Restricting avatars to a certain size (both filesize and dimensions) is dead trivial, though.

Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:30 pm

toxent wrote:
Any word on why this isn't done here?

Because I don't like them? Seems like a good reason to me.

PRIME1 wrote:
I have noticed a lot more sig pics lately.

I wouldn't mind getting rid of those as well, but then I'd have to deal with the uprising of all the folders..

blitzy wrote:
a good way to implement them, if ever, would be to have it as part of a forum profile option whereby the default profile is set to omit avatars from display.

But then as the administrator, I'd have to look at them all the time to make sure they were acceptable (or disable user-made avatars).

Of course, that (hiding avatars) isn't possible with the default phpBB install.

anand · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:40 pm

There is a phpBB mod to allow each user to turn on and off avatars and signatures. I've got it on my forum and it works pretty well.

I also saw a mod that would use Javascript to enforce avatar size limits, even for non-locally hosted avatars.

IMO I think avatars are far less annoying than signature pics....

BobbinThreadbare · Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:54 pm

I agree with Kevin, TR is better with no avatars.

Scorpiuscat · Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:26 pm

Makes no difference to me.

FireGryphon · Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:30 pm

PRIME1 wrote:
I have noticed a lot more sig pics lately.

Flashy, graphic-heavy sig pics cheapen the look of these forums. Sig pics that advertise things are gaudy as well. The folding ones are okay since they are not graphic intensive and tend to be low profile.

TR's professional look should not be compromised by sig graphics, sig advertisements, or avatars.

gratuitous · Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:37 pm

Ragnar Dan · Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:11 am

It wouldn't bother me, a definite team TR folder, if all of the signature pictures were to disappear. Especially since it would mean I wouldn't have to see thread pages load and then wait on various peoples' servers to send out the comparatively small number of bytes in the darned things.

Usacomp2k3 · Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:18 am

I don't really mind the static smaller folding sigs. I wouldn't be sad if I saw them leave, though. Some that are too colorful kinda take away from the simplistic look of the site. (I'm a simple kinda guy, as evidenced by my Firefox theme, trillian skin, simple background with no icons, etc). However, I first and foremost abide by what Kevin and Damage decide.

toxent · Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:46 am

Well...

It's nice to see that i got so many prompt replies.

Avatars are cool, but TR looks more mature and professional without them.

I guess i never thought of it this way. I must admit now that i do think about it, it makes sense and i do appreciate the professional look and feel of TR.

Just so i'm clear i wasn't trying to advocate avatars, i was just asking a question.

steelcity_ballin · Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:46 am

OMG LOL I'm totally getting goldencasino.com in my sig pic. I'll be the rich0rz!1111

I use whatever TR lets me. Color and variety is good.

bhtooefr · Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:06 am

FireGryphon, are you talking to me?

Anyway, the sig pic I have now is less obtrusive than my old folding sig:

<img src="http://sparrowbot.com/Sigs/sig1.php?designer=bhtooefr&sigid=1">

Granted, my FAD sig was VERY unobtrusive, but seeing as my laptop can't handle distributed computing very well (too much heat), I saw no point in having a sig that I wasn't going to use.

Animated GIFs in the sigs, though, can be VERY annoying. However, IIRC, there's a rule against that.

mattsteg · Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:54 am

PerfectCr wrote:
Personally I find sig pics more annoying because it interrupts my reading of a thread, especially when someone posts multiple times one right after the other *coughPETEROTHcough*. Avatars (not animated gifs) would work better imo.

Neither would be much better, or at least a more appropriate height restriction. A little image off to the side beats a 100 pixel high behemoth in the sig.

bhtooefr · Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:08 pm

I can actually read faster with avatars or sig pics.

This will sound really lazy, but I can associate an image with a poster, and not actually look at the username...

For example, on pete_roth's posts, I'll recognize his "Wings fan for life" folding sig, and realize it's him, without having to look over to the left for the username. And, I can recognize an image at a glance - reading takes a little longer than a quick glance.

Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:28 pm

Enormous avatars and sig pics always make text difficult to read because a) the actual text gets buried under all the ****, and b) makes you scroll a lot.

Hell, I've visited forums where I actually stood for like 20 seconds staring at the screen actually *looking* for whatever the person was saying. Eventually I found it, buried among all the pictures and similar crap.

bhtooefr · Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:38 pm

I would not be opposed to reducing the sig height limit to, oh, 75 pixels.

And, morphine, I know exactly what you're talking about. Heck, I've been guilty of having a sig that did that on one forum (Ctrl+Alt+Del).

At least a sig pic is fairly obviously not part of the post, and you have to get REALLY inventive to get more than one pic in there with the 255 character limit (I've done that, though...)

primitive.notion · Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:17 pm

I don't mind as long as you can turn them off. I turn off all signatures and all avatars.

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How come we don't use avatars?

How come we don't use avatars?

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