Red Hot Avatars! - TTLG Forums

ignatios on 26/11/2002 at 03:32

Discuss.

Tarren on 26/11/2002 at 04:21

Why not all text avatars? Instead of "Location: Stealing your wallet LOL" and "member", we could put something useful.

Daxim on 26/11/2002 at 05:59

Ok. As with all problems, there are several aspects. The problem cannot be tackled until all aspects are satisfied.* The technical side: I already made some comments in (http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=646589#post646589) Daljord's avatar thread. To recapitulate - a solid technical foundation is needed to serve the avatars, or else those who decide to view avatars (i.e. have them enabled) are off worse than now. As history and personal experience shows, allowing remote loading is generally a bad idea. Some n00b will eventually come and put his image on tripod or equal assy slow or stalling server and ruin page loading for everyone else. Also, can you imagine already the number of complaints of unclueful users who store their file on a server that is configured to suppress remote embedding (like it is the case with most free webhosts nowadays)? - So I rule that out. Avatar images should definitely stored on selected hosts that are trusted to serve them properly and rapidly, ideally solely under the domain ttlg.com itself ((http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/http/pipelining-faq.html) why?).

Concerns about the physical properties of the images: file size, dimensions and file type. If vB is anything like phpBB, the necessary code is already there. It is trivial to reject any image which is for instance larger than 6400 pixels (sounds big, but is just 80*80px), bigger than 5 kB or has a filetype other than than the well-compressing established web formats JPEG(2000), PNG/MNG, Lurawave or Shockwave Flash. If not, the functionality can be coded within one day. PHP provides the function (http://php.net/getimagesize) getimagesize which already takes cares of that thought.

Concerns about the increasing traffic and bandwidth usage: this just has to be monitored. I propose a test phase of one month (maybe with only 100 members and then extrapolate the results? hm, not technically easily feasible) where avatars are enabled. Then compare the data with the time before and then judge whether the load is acceptable or not.* The social side: I'm picking up some points that were already discussed to some degree, then add some new thoughts.

Preselected few avatars (allegedly to decrease load) vs. free choice: I think we all agree that free choice is the way to go. Avatars are by definition personal identifiers and preselection defeats the purpose.

Political correctness a.k.a. offensability (prejudices ahoi! :)): TTLG holds this guise of a "family site" (whatever may that mean specifically) and also has its large share of USAians who generally are easily morally indignable with imagery we Europeans would just shrug off. So what if we get a new taffer Floppy Cock avec fitting avatar? I wouldn't be bothered. Would you? What is your limit? Open sores? Titties'n'cunts? Murderdeathkillgore? Cannibalism? What is the general acceptable limit? Who decides what's acceptable? Obviously, we need to reach a consense first.

Do images need to be quarantined first and pass some sort of lame mediate inspection or do we allow to deploy them immediately and then just wait for someone to complain to the responsible moderator? I'd rather vote for the latter (less bureaucratic) option.

Animation: not really an issue since we already have gratuitiously animated smileys, so that's hardly a step upwards in annoyance. Although... every posting on the left side twitching and bopping... but then again user agents allow switching animation off. What do you say?I am in favour of avatars, but only when Done Right™. Personally, I find signatures which are appended to every single post in a thread (as opposed to merely the first reply) more harassing.

sailoreagle on 26/11/2002 at 11:25

I am generally opposed to avatars. However, if they were nicely implemented, I would not throw a fit. ;)

My suggestions are:* Make a poll to see what the majority wants. If the majority of people say "no avatars", then it's no avatars. (Yes, I am aware that if the majority of people say "I wouldn't mind an avatar" we'd end up with avatars for everybody. But as I said above, eh. If that's what the community at large wants, who am I to complain? I can always turn the "display avatars" option off in the user cp.)

I suggest a poll because it seems to me that it's just a vocal minority who is shouting for avatars, while many people don't want them or couldn't care less. This way we'd get an idea of exactly how many people want avatars and don't want avatars.* If avatars are allowed for everybody, make it a "time been here" deal. I have seen forums, for instance, which give the ability to set a custom title when you have been a member there for a year and a custom avatar when you have been a member there for two years. You could do the same thing over here.

Why?

Well, this would cut down on the amount of idiotic avatars a lot. People who stay here a year or two generally all have a clue, and would be unlikely to use tasteless or offensive avatars (or steal another person's avatar). Same goes for the member title.
This would allow to reduce the risk of somebody having a tasteless or offensive avatar to practically nil, and cut down on the time the admins would have to spend policing new avatars to see if they are acceptable.* Filesize and image dimensions: I suggest 60x60 and no more than 2kb of filesize (whichever is smaller). (And yes, Daxim, vB does have the capability to check, I've seen it in action at another forum). This way avatars would be small enough to not be too much in your face.

You could also exclude .gif as an allowed extension for avatars, which would exclude animated avatars; that would force people to use .png if they want a transparent avatar, but I think that's no big deal.

[edit] Oh yes, and no flash or similar allowed in avatars, please. [/edit]

mopgoblin on 26/11/2002 at 12:08

Quote:

If avatars are allowed for everybody, make it a "time been here" deal.

This does not seem like a good idea - it promotes the idea that some individuals are of greater value to the community than others (as does any other requirement, with the possible exception of moderators/administrators only). In fact, it is impossible to have an unbiased argument either for or against such an idea.

I do not mind whether avatars are enabled for registered members or not, as long as there are no criteria for having one if they are enabled, except to disallow them to those who have abused the privilege of having an avatar. At first, a system based on the time since registration seems reasonable (better than considering post counts, donations etc.), but this does unfairly disadvantage some members of the community, such as those who have waited a significant time before registration (lurkers). In addition there are those who may have registered, completely forgotten about TTLG, and reappeared months or years later. Finally, someone who has been registered for two days may well be more responsible than someone who has been registered for two years.

Uncia on 26/11/2002 at 12:58

Pretty much agreed with everything said here. I'm obviously biased as far as the "time registered" issue goes, so I'll just say that it might be an appropriate measure to test things with before moving on to full allow. Although I still think one should be a member for at least a month or two before getting one... Mature or not, we have no way of testing that and some buffer time to weed out the trolls is a GoodThing.

sailoreagle on 26/11/2002 at 13:34

mopgoblin: good points. Still, allowing avatars for anybody would mean a lot of extra work for the admins, who would have to look at every single avatar (notice how many members this forum has) to see if it's acceptable or not, in addition to having to run around the forums and see if there's anything not acceptable in threads. So you need some sort of filtering system or requirement for having an avatar. Time spent here, even if it does disadvantage some people, is still the best requirement, as it can't be abused (like avatar by postcount would be) and it wouldn't be unfair towards too many people (like avatar by donation would be... think of all the people who can't afford to donate).
Maybe not make it a year, make it five or six months, I dunno. Like Uncia said, it would give some buffer time to weed out the trolls. It's not a question of "greater value", like it would have been with donations ("you donate, you're getting an avatar because you're better than people who don't donate"); it's simply a question of responsibility. Very few members who have registered one or two years ago are likely to abuse the option to have an avatar, or to be offensive with it, or to turn trollish, simply because they've been here longer, they know how the place works, and the simple fact that they're still here shows that they're not utter trollish morons. I know that not all newbies are utter trollish morons, and in fact, most newbies are decent people... but newbies are an unknown. You need a buffer period.

(And the solution can't be "the admins look at every single user and decide whether they're ready to have an avatar or not", before anybody suggests that, because that would mean a load of extra work for the admins and a lot of possible unfairness and of cries of unfairness).

ignatios on 26/11/2002 at 15:09

sailoreagle's "time been here" idea is best, IMO. People generally have a good idea of your "worth" based on your posts themselves, not on how high your post count is. Someone who does nothing but spam the boards with a high post count isn't going to be respected as much as someone with a low post count make makes their posts count.

If not "time been here" or post count, it should be in the same spirit ... eg how much they've put into the community. I was thinking of a kind of nomination system with secret votes (that just don't show up on their page or on guest pages) but that can quickly lead to a popular/not popular division ... more than we already have.

We also have to keep in mind that whatever system we decide on (if any), there will always be people who can and will abuse it.

I think that TTLG is mature enough (did I really say that??) to not make a big deal over the post count thing ... look at how many celebration threads for people's n-thousandth post. Maybe with 2000, people get an avatar.

scumble on 26/11/2002 at 15:49

I reckon we'd be better off just forgetting about the bloody avatars, to be honest. It doesn't seem to be worth the effort of putting them in, including the effort required to control avatar content. After 5 minutes we'll ignore the things or just turn them off.

Tarren's suggestion of text avatars also seems pointless, because people already play with the location field to say something personal.

It just doesn't seem to add anything. Shall we do something else now? ;)

Uncia on 26/11/2002 at 16:49

It's worth it to some of us. So shoo! Go play elsewhere now. ;)