Quite simply, we need avatars among some other improvements
 

I have been a member of FOFC for quite some time and I absolutely love this place. This is going to make my life look sad, and it certainly is, but FOFC is the only place where I can go and communicate with such a wide variety of intelligent and knowledgeable people. Not to mention that most everyone here shares many of my interests in life in football, video games, problem solving and the list goes forever on. We have people here from all over the country, all over the world and from all different avenues of life. For the most part I respect and appreciate the views of every person who is a part of this community. For me it says a lot about our little corner of the world that I have been coming back to this place time and time again and I never intend to stop. If you knew me well you would know that that is unprecedented as I bounce around groups of friends and passionate interests so much that you could probably declare me insane. And yet I always come back to FOFC.

Enough gushing. You know I love you baby.

The point I want to make is that I love this place to bits and pieces. But there are really some small changes, some little things that we could do around here that would make me love this place so much more.

For instance: avatars

Now I have been a member here for quite some time, but I don't think I was here when or if FOFC ever had avatars. I have been here long enough however, to know that whenever this topic is raised it essentially turns into a joke. (I might even throw down a wager that the first response in this thread is nothing but simple rolleyes) From what I have read when this topic is raised there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue with apparently the people in charge who make decisions such as these feeling as though it would tarnish this place in some way. And I've been completely fine with that decision for no other reason than complacency. To be honest if we had them I don't even know if I would use one.

But it occurred to me recently that if we had avatars I think that the people here would start to turn more into individuals for me and it would really help me to make better connections. When reading through threads I could much more easily associate a picture on a post to someone than just their name. In fact, usually as I read through threads I don't even pay attention to who said what. I'm a visual thinker and often times I never even make a connection here between what a person said and who that person actually is. My knowledge on the who's who of FOFC is weak to say the very least and I probably couldn't tell a Kodos from a Chief Rum based only on what they said. I want get to know the people of FOFC better and if I had visual associations I could make when I read it would help this tremendously. Not to mention motivate me to go back and read through all of the face the board threads.

If there are concerns around avatars (and I think I've heard this reasoning before) we could always enable an option to turn them off if you don't like them. I'm sure there are dynamics to this thing that I just simply don't understand but every line of attack against avatars that I can come up with in my head just doesn't hold up under scrutiny. To me we have an idea here that quite simply makes sense. And in the spirit of 2008 I will now not say that because it makes sense and is reasonable and would better this place that it cannot happen. Sure it can.

Search for the "What The Hell Do You Look Like, 2007" thread. It has pictures of people, if that's what you're looking for.

If we allowed avatars, half the board would just have a picture of Pumpy Tudors as their avatar. Which would make it pointless.

I like it the way it is. What's the point of having avatars anyway? Would putting a picture under your name enhance your FOFC experience that much?

No, it wouldn't enhance it at all.

However, the picture under YOUR name, and Dark Cloud's name and anyone else's name would enhance things quite a bit for me.

A lot of times I read through a thread and don't remember who said what. If I associated a picture with each poster which I saw each time they posted it would help me immensely.

Again, I also think that if we do implement them we should also implement an option to turn them off. Better yet, we implement them as turned off with an opt-in option to turn them on. It would be a transparent change for everyone that didn't want to see them.

To give users more personality/identity.

What if they had the same avatar like st. cronin said? If I had a choice of having an avatar, I wouldn't have one, so how would you identify me?

+1

I like the avatar-free nature of tis board.

It's liberating.

Hmmm, you make a good point. How about I get to assign something to you or even override what you've chosen if I don't like it? No one else need ever know what I've done, but it would make this a better place for me. I'm sure there are others that would benefit from this as well.

And there are obviously plenty of people who don't like avatars and dont want them at all. I think it's obvious that the change would need to be invisible for those people for this to be viable.

This doesn't get to your point, but here is a Kodos-Chief Rum primer:

Chief Rum

Posts long, long posts
WW veteran
Moderate fiscal Repub who has gotten into political hassles in the past
Huge hockey (and Ducks) fan
The resident Angels fan
Big time UCLA supporter

Kodos

Not Kang
Despondent Miami Dolphins fan
Likes to post polls
Obviously a huge Simpsons fan
The resident alien

Hope that helps!

Made me LOL

I dunno, Ive ventured over to some boards where they have avatars and to me they ended up being juvenile and distracting. I mean how many times do I have to see the avatar of the girl's boobs jiggling, or the cowbell, etc.

I don't know why no one can understand the concept of OPTIONAL avatars. If you don't like them, turn them off!

I don't know if I'd use avatars if they became available, but I'd like to see people with them. I'm a picture person and I just can't remember stuff about a person if I only see their name. Even if people change avatars regularly, that still makes it easier. It's a nice way to personalize your profile even more.

I used to want avatars, but now that I have grown up, I don't actually give a fuck.

That sounded harsh toward mrsimperless. I guess I should have just said, "I don't care either way".

Man. I could never, ever be a politician.

Never gonna happen.

+1

The mods would spend so much time blocking new users avatars it would make them crazy. I personaly find them distracting.

What were you thinking Dark Cloud? Opportunity missed.

Yeah, I'm still pretty pissed about that. :)

I don't usually look at who posts what unless it's incredibly witty/funny. Avatars will help identify people but I can see why the mods don't want anything to do with it.



Yes, I would use this one:

i would use that gay pic of Izulde reclining on a bed as my avatar.

It was late man. It was late.

No. No we don't. And I would prob use that Izulde pic also.

The douchebag factor would probably be off the charts with avatars, and I think Skydog, et al would be spending way too much time moderating them. And honestly in a group full of adults, 1 second is too much time spent making moderation decisions cause some jackass wants to post a questionable pic.

Only thing that I could see would be a pre-loaded set of sports logos, pumpy pics and the izulde lounge catalog.

Avatars would be fun, but ultimately annoying. In my experience, what inevitably happens is someone will make a comment about someone else's avatar in the middle of a thread and then the thread gets hopelessly off-track. It is annoying and silly.

This would be a problem whether a person has avatars set to display or hide. It would also be more work for the moderation team, approving or blocking avatars, warning people, setting policy decisions on what is over the line and what isn't (and the thing with avatars is that no matter how hard a line you set, there will be a group of people that try to get as close to it as possible--ie the YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE THE NIPPLE people).

I think avatars would be fun, but would ultimately change the nature of the board in a negative way.

Come on man. I don't care about avatars at all, but "what inevitably happens is someone will make a comment about someone else's fill-in-the-blank in the middle of a thread and then the thread gets hopelessly off-track", already happens on a daily basis, so I hardly think that would be a huge difference-maker.

Thank you.

This game could be fun:


Who's next?

I'm just curious if Mr. Imperless would be happy with you posting your pics on here.

(ducks)

what inevitably happens is someone will make a comment about someone else's patriotic undies in the middle of a thread and then the thread gets hopelessly off-track

Did someone say, "boobs jiggling"?

You are welcome to that opinion. I stand by mine.

*nod*

Let us have a virgin whisky and toast our diversity with one another, kemo sabe.

Hey, if adding avatars would drastically increase the time it takes the pages to load, we are all for it!

Signed,
Mr. and Mrs. Slowsky

you make me hot

Not to sound a bit pretentious here, but I don't think FOFC is as low-brow as many other boards. I mean, we are in our own way, but this board isn't made up of a bunch of teens. I don't think anyone that's been here for even a week would add an avatar that would be racy- out of the respect of the people that would have to moderate them.

I guess I don't know exactly what the big deal is.

My avatar would be the University of New Orleans logo... and you would be able to see the nipple.

I have two I normally use on message boards. One is a painting of Buddy Holly that has always just kind of cracked me up, and the other is a cyberman from Dr. Who that also cracks me up.

I not sure how I feel about this, lets ask the baby...

vBulletin gives you the ability to turn off avatars and signatures if you don't want to see them.

Right. Amongst a host of other options-- which just makes me confused as to why it is such a sin to even suggest avatars around here. It's like people get complacent because we haven't had 'em for so long.

Change people! It's 2008!

I have a host full of inappropriate avatars I'm just itchin to use.

An old cyberman or cyberman from the recent Doctor Who?

SI

Shin Chan's butt is ready to become an avatar for someone on this board, I say we need them.

Real response=I would like them, but can easily live without them.

Text sims /= avatars

A worthless waste of bandwidth IMO.

I hate avatars, but I'm voting for Shorty in '08!

would the board even be allowed to use that much bandwidth on gamespy/sportplanet or whatever the fuck it is called?

:eek: