Ajare on 18/11/2004 at 19:08
I would say that putting restrictions on avatars and signatures is very workable. Keep all avatars unanimated, at a fixed (64x64?) size, and have no image sigs. Or keep image sigs at a fixed size, and only allow them once per page per person, or something. On another board that I post on, all avatars have to relate to the board subject, and are screened by mods. But I have no problems with not having 'em.
Tomi on 18/11/2004 at 19:15
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
No, it's not Hubert Cumberdale.
True, it's Marjory Stewart-Baxter (who tastes like sunshine dust!)
Didn't realise that the red thing on the background is her hair...
Fascist on 18/11/2004 at 20:47
Yes. We run a tight ship here at Castle TTLG. We can't have some RPG nut filling his page long sig with Cloud of Squall gifs, or worse, Solid Snake.
Why does it always have to be Solid Snake? I'm sick of seeing his watercolour face repeated over and over down forum walls.
So gentlemen, lets keep ttlg professional.
buglunch on 18/11/2004 at 21:37
Well, not so much professional as free from Bloated Goofy©, a la most ditzy fora, which means the majority, "oy vey vhat vill dem goyim shay??"
Sah on 18/11/2004 at 22:02
So how about a compromise then? 64x64 avatars & no images in signatures. After all, there is some practical use in avatars - you quickly recognize people when browsing a thread. It just looks different than only a name.
(and huge images in sigs are gay indeed)
IHateTheUndead on 18/11/2004 at 23:44
A lovely game Grammaton Cleric henke :cheeky:
Scots Taffer on 19/11/2004 at 00:12
There are text-based signatures, at least.
A picture is worth a thousand words anywhere but TTLG.
Here you need your words, so learn to weild them well. ;)
dj_ivocha on 19/11/2004 at 01:30
Quote Posted by Sah
After all, there is some practical use in avatars - you quickly recognize people when browsing a thread.
Even though I'm not a long-time member here, I can already recognize most of the active users here quite easily. Not that it's so difficult just to move your eyes about 0.1 mm to the left in order to see the poster...
And that forum Daveh linked to reminded me of something I've always wondered - wtf with all these sigs, where the poster quotes other "significant" posts (which, most of the time have no meaning out of the context in which they were posted)? :weird:
Inline Image:
http://www.student.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~ivoch/crap/smilies/prod.gifAs I said, forums are for talking. I come here not to look at goofy pictures, but instead to talk with fellow internet-ers (did I just "invent" a new word?), read opinions other than mine and so on. If I want pictures, there are enough sites out there that offer just that. Or, alternatively, I just wait for some (short) time here, until someone posts a picture of say, Cameron Diaz. :thumb:
rsawarhawk on 19/11/2004 at 01:49
I want that as my sig! :joke:
I guess I like ttlg the way it is
mopgoblin on 19/11/2004 at 01:55
Quote Posted by Sah
So how about a compromise then? 64x64 avatars & no images in signatures.
64x64 is still pretty big at 800x600 or 640x480, and it'd stretch small posts vertically to an annoying degree. And although the images would be cached by the user's browser, loading a thread page full of avatars for the first time would be rather slow (assume 2KB per avatar, 20 unique posters on a page, and you get 40KB of avatars - probably more than the actual content, and there are still a lot of people using 56k (or slower) modems. I'd say the only way it could really work would be 32x32 images, limited to 1KB, non-animated, and with "Show Avatars" off by default. After all that, they would seem somewhat pointless, except for the bit about recognising people.
Quote:
After all, there is some practical use in avatars - you quickly recognize people when browsing a thread. It just looks different than only a name.
That's the one thing which makes me think they might be worthwhile, if they're never an annoyance to anyone who doesn't want them. There are various groups of people who I can't tell apart due to similar names (or rather, I didn't notice the difference in names at first, so I think of them as the same person). The best example would be anyone with "sneaksie" in their name, although I haven't noticed any of them around recently. Such an image can be mentally associated with a person more easily than a location or registration date, having the advantage of being unique to that person.
