No avatars, wierd.

I must say that this forum having no avatars is very unusual and unprofessional. This is the only one I have ever heard of that would not accept avatars. ...and you guys even had to close my thread, making it seem like my input on other issues is not welcome. Are you that stingy over bandwidth that you would not even think about letting us mark our posts visually? Linux is supposed to be about community effort, and this forum is looking more about like Microsoft now.

Having come here from a Linux forum that had avatars, I must say I don't miss them much. Most of us are here because of dial-up connections, and therefore don't want to waste our precious bandwidth downloading someones favorite anime character or other meaningless (to us) picture when all we want to do is communicate with our Linux lovin bretheren.

Besides, if you see an avatar here, you're dealing with the big cheese.

lectraplayer,

Unfortunately I think avatars make things look a bit unprofessional. We are very open to suggestions and implement the vast majority of them. This issue however has been brought up before and the decision has been made by me to not have avatars. You can "mark your posts visually" with the icons which you have done above. I can honestly say I think this forum is one of the finest Linux resources you will find and it is 100% free.

--jeremy

I've never liked avatars, and I'm glad to see that they're not on this forum.

As a side note, I can only think of one forum I frequent that DOES have avatars, the rest do no allow them. I don't think it's that uncommon.

Pcghost,

You bring up a good point. Page load time is one of the things I really focus on (hence the minimal design here) and avatars really slow things down. On the stingy note I will make a deal with you lectraplayer - you pay for 100% of the sites bandwidth and I will enable avatars.

--jeremy

at the risk of seeing another post close ill stand of the side of avatars, if you use dial up and dont want it slowed down then you can turn avatars off at your end just click and youre done.
if youre worried about bandwith you can have all avatars remotely located since most isp's give members some web space that is normally not used.

is this not so?

I guess I don't understand why people need the goofy little pictures. The whole point of this place is the text, who really needs all the Las Vegas style flash on the page. To me it has gotten to the point where a lot of people can't help but use animations etc, avatars have become like banner ads IMHO.
:-)

Having them remote could potentially hang the page even more. Out of 25 avatars on a page atleast 2-3 remote images are either going to be broken or on servers that are down. While I can sympathize with the people who want avatars like I said the decision on this one has been made (although this thread is in no danger of being closed). I can say that I potentially have something instore for the people that want avatars, but it's a small way off...

--jeremy

oh. I hate avatars. they ruined my life and stole my cigarettes.

jeremy
This site is the greatest for Linux. I like the layout and do not care for the avatars, I'm on 56k dail-up with no chance of anything faster in the near future (budget limitations & I live in a rural area) so I thank you for keeping the site "streamlined" for us old dail-uppers.

Thanks for running a great site it has helped me so much

Bubba169

I strongly agree. Avatars are a waste of time on an "information" website. I think this site is very professional, and furthermore, a great resource to professionals. If it were to be blanketed with Avatars, I think it would take away some of the more professional atmosphere (although laid back in the same note, just not so much that you have the trolls some other sites do), and in turn take away some of the professionals.

As for the comment on:

Linux is supposed to be about community effort, and this forum is looking more about like Microsoft now.

Yes, linux is about community effort, yes it is. Linux is all about community, and sharing. So share your information, and if you wish to have a chat room where you and your buddies can "chat" with cute little avatars, then create one, there are some opensource options out there for you to use. Place a link to this in your sig, and then you can feel like you have done your fair share of Avatar plastering on LQ

Cool

some of you people are way to serious, and melodramatic i have never seen avatars 'plastered' all over. why do you think jeremy has an avatar? it makes for quick and easy recognition, using representative symbols goes back to the begining of mankind. its natural.

try doing a search for "avatars" on this forum... a couple of requests, but the vast majority like the board the way it is. clean, simple, and fast.

Not sure if I should post this or not, as it doesn't do much, but I'll just add that I like the no avatars policy. I was at one (non-computer) board where they had avatars and I carefully *made* my own avatar - and then the board took away avs. *That* annoyed me. But if they aren't there to begin with, I prefer it. Truth be told, even regarding smilies, there are text smilies and expressions that could be used in place of the smilies which don't show up in, say, Lynx anyway. It is about the text and information. The net's gone mad with graphics and applets and all kinds of silly crap. The site looks more professional as an informational site rather than a carnival. And I don't get the attitude. There are other Linux sites with avs - I prefer this one but, if you want avs more than help, go to some other one. If you want help more than avs, I'd imagine you were certainly welcome to be here.

Originally posted by Brain Drop some of you people are way to serious, and melodramatic i have never seen avatars 'plastered' all over. why do you think jeremy has an avatar? it makes for quick and easy recognition, using representative symbols goes back to the begining of mankind. its natural.

Jeremy sticks out so much b/c he's the only one with an avator. If everybuddy had one he wouldn't stick out at all.

anne