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.:mad: 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.:tisk:

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:
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.

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

Why don't you make a cool ascii art thing and put it in your sig :D

I agree with those who don't like avatars - I find them unnecessary and often annoying. As far as making it easy to recognise people - there are 1000+ users here (?) I for one don't plan on memorising that many avatars. And isn't that what names are for?

Unusual? A matter of opinion.
Unprofessional? Baloney.
While one can make a case for avatars personalizing their posts (and actually your individual screen name and signature also serve this purpose) the decision to have them does rest with the person responsible for this very well run bulletin board.
Usenet has survived quite some time without avatars. Yikes, I have just made a case for "unprofessional".
:eek:
Perhaps the addition of pop up adds every time a link is clicked would provide the financing needed. Anyone that didn't like them could go to extra trouble to turn them off as Brain Drop suggests with avatars.
:(
I hear pop up ads are considered quite professional.
:D

alright fine, so you all dont want avatars ill let it go. but jeremy does not stick out because he is the only one with an avatar, the brain just picks up on pictures faster. and a picture is worth a thousand words and that goes a long way towards personalization. it just gives you something to identify a person with and have more of a feeling about their character. you know that a person with an avatar of a smiley face drinking a pint over and over is probably an all right guy. but whatever, profesional it is then. aye aye captain.

A thousand words. Words like.. "oh look at me i have a vaguely penguin shaped thing defacating on bill gates." that's a picutre really worth painting isn't it... :rolleyes:

It amazes me how so many people in life see fit to demand things when there is no concievable reason to do so. Obviously i'm using this site as an example.. a site that is, as jeremy said, 100% free. people are always welcome to make suggestions, but demands are generally absurd. This site, as every other (even the nasty tacky ones covered in avatars) have the right to look how they want to. it's Jeremy's perogative to not let this site look like a war zone. Sure it would be possible to make a site like this "skinable" with css or what you will... but keeping this site clean has done wonders for it's reputation as well as it's usage. If this site was covered in tacky flashing logos and such I really doubt that distributions such as Slackware would be using this as an OFFICIAL resource for their sotware.

Personally i don't like l33tness, and most people that have a compulsion to spell with numbers also seem attracted by gimmicks like avatars (you're welcome to think of your own analogy.)

Yeah, that's what text is.

Brain Drop brings up a good point. If you don't want avatars, you should have an option to turn it off. Also, I use a dial-up connection and it don't take THAT long for avatars to load. ...especially if they are, like 60x60 avatars. It is also true that you can also remotely locate avatars and use them (if the forum lets you) and the forum is not billed for the bandwidth. As many times as I hear it is asked, I think it may be time to allow them, even if they are small in size. As for me, all the forums I visit except this one allow avatars and two I frequent allows huge avatars, though if you look there, my avatar is usually within the 60X60 limit that is usually marked. I know we all have our own opinion, and mine includes that having no avatars looks rather unprofessoinal in many cases. On my 56K connection, I have noticed that avatars may take, at the most, five seconds to load, and that's with it loading a bunch of other buttons and stuff at the same time. Though I don't have the money to pay for bandwidth as the site is now, it might cost an extra 50 cents a month for the avatars. If that's a concern to you, let me put an URL in my prefs so that it will retrive the avatar from there? There's more than one way to do avatars and more than reason to do them. If you wanted, you could even limit what you can put as an avatar more than most sites do (IE only stuff that doesn't have a logo unless it's Linux). Though my problem isn't so much avatars, it just seemed then like you just weren't listening to your users.:tisk:

jerimy is listening, and we hear this 'we want to ugly the place up' argument about twice a year. avatars are not going to happen, stop begging.

The notion of remotely-loaded avatars was already addressed. I'm sure you know as well as I do how broken image links can slow a site down, not to mention loading images from overworked servers. I recpect your right to your opinion, but the characterization of "unprofessional" just seems bizarre to me.

The only kind of avatar I wouldn't mind would be if each user were allowed to display the official logo of his/her chosen distro. This would actually serve a useful purpose, and Jeremy could control the size and content of the images easily. Of course, this would open a new can of worms, as people complain that their distro is not represented, or they want logos for all five of their favorites.

But I imagine that's not at all what the people clamoring for avatars have in mind anyway. Personally, I like the site just the way it is -- clean and content-oriented. A good website is about content, and graphics which do not contribute to the focus of that content are superfluous.

To add to the fray...

IMO avatars do not make the site look professional at all and in fact add clutter and noise. Linking to avatar images hosted elsewhere will add to the page load times as well, while broken links will furnish the joint with.. broken link images. Ugly.

LQ is clean and fast. Just the way I like it.

<edit> Damn that Skywatcher is fast...
"The force is stong in that one."

Yeah ok then... after all, one person in each 100 members or so can't be wrong! Ever heard of a silent majority?

I'm curious about why people believe avatars make a site look professional.
All the sites with avatars are visited one or fewer times by me. I see a site
with hundreds of different, usually obscure or ugly images in the margins
and I think, "Ok, there's nothing of import here, just people chatting."

To me, a site with a bunch of images looks neither good nor professional.
Any time I come across a site with a large number of images (unless I'm
looking for images), I hit the back button and look for a different site.
And I have a T1 line at work and a broadband connection at home. It
doesn't matter what the speed of my connection is, I hate wading through
images.

When you are 2 that is correct. However, name association with content oriented replies is MUCH better than image association with the same content. You don't associate an avatar of Homer with the greatest reply ever; however you can associate a name (whether it be a screen-name or actual name) with content (Take anything from Shakespeare for an example; now compare that to associating a picture of sand to a poem. I think you will notice that anything associated with sand will come to mind with the picture, however anything associated with SHAKESPEARE comes to mind when you think his name...) VERY well. Furthermore, you run into multiple people with the same avatar, then, according to you, everyone using that avatar will now be associated with that "style" of response.

No, I don't agree, unless I was confused and most people here are 2 - 5 years old or less...

Cool

I'm actually, this is going to be a surprise, pro-avatar... with some severe constraints. There's this one overclocker's site in the UK that has rank based avatars that looks rather well done. I also like the suggestion about distro based avatars. Each of these compromises knocks out the problems with bandwidth as within a few page loads local browser cache has all of the possible images, which altogether would actually be smaller than the "post", "edit", "www" blah blah blah buttons that are tiny, but nibble away at bandwidth here and there.

Now, here's why I don't ever want to see avatars on LQ.

1. I couldn't post at work, and that's where I get most of my posting done. For nearly two years now I've been posting on LQ without a whisper from my co-workers, then one week I'm posting over at www.wilwheaton.net and next thing I know I've got people nosing in on my terminal. Eventually this will become an "issue", and then I lose my favorite work slackoff pasttime.

2. We are all freeloaders on Jeremy's paycheck. LQ does not run a profit off of banner ads and Donating members and T-shirts, but because, I suspect, Jer spends way too much of his income in floating the bill. He's way too much of a nice guy, and would probably be willing to take a hit like increased bandwidth costs in order to make the user base happier... if it was for something less inconsequential.

Cheers,

Finegan

I don't think most realize, Jeremy is open for suggestions but this is something that most likely will not change ever as he has stated numerous times before his stance on avatars.

I think everyone who is pro-avatar should just let this topic die now, cause no matter how much anyone whines and moans about enabling avatars, its not gonna happen. And the more its dragged out, the more its just going to aggravate members, moderators, etc.

No way!
 

Way back when I first heard about linux, did a google, and found this site, I was restricted on internet time, by my parents. (I think that that was a good rule anyways.) I remember the panic when my parents told me to log off, and a image intensive site that I wanted to see was less than 1/2 way done.
I've stuck with this site b/c it looks more professional, and I've grown to appreciate it. But avatars would have meant that this person would have looked somewhere else.

and I agree, Jeremy runs this thing, so deserves to have something special.

just my 2 cents worth

titanium geek

(will be looking into ASCII pic in sig soon!)

We like a small signal to noise ratio here.

Linux questions and answers = signal.
Avatar's (and large sigs) = noise.

LQ is all about helping people and promoting the use of GNU/Linux and 'Free' Software - and anything that detracts from that is noise.

no avs is fine w/ me

Like I said before, if we put avatars, we can also put a way to turn 'em off. Also, notice how this thread has really took off since I posted, what only three or four times, and we already have three pages. Looks to me like many of the members probably want avatars to a certain extent. Also, connections are now much faster so Titanium's situations's getting fewer and further between. Even dial-up's gotten fairly quick.

hmm thats a pretty good idea

lectraplayer,

I don't think your understanding this, no matter how many members demand avatars, Jeremy has already posted and stated they will not be enabled for any reason at this point.

This is a no win situation at this point. There's no need to push for something that isn't going to happen.

As far as I'm concerned, avatars or no avatars , as long as the "gurus" are happy to help us less experienced or n00bs around here,I'm happy..
There are lots and lots of places for cool graphics, if one needs them..(I love avatars..)

i think the fact that every tv station (who doesnt associate nbc with a peacock?) and business and product and auto maker and almost anything else in the modern world has a logo (avatar) proves my point better than yours. unless the whole world is 2 - 5 years old by your thinking? and in the old days there were family crests...


edit: by the way i do think this is a great site.

That's advertising, not associating a quality "text" post with a hideous picture/logo.

I didn't make up my post to prove you wrong, it's fact. Unless you are here to sell something, and wish to associate your name with an avatar to help those who cannot associate text with text, then I am correct. Selling a product, associating it with a "logo" of some sort is one way to ensure you reach those people who are incapable of associating word/word associations.

:)

Nice rebuttle though, to one who didn't actually know a few things about how the brain works (more importantly, how well a more advanced (meaning neither a 2 year old, nor a slightly less than average adult) mind can associate text with text over pictures with text) might see how well your point is written.

Cool

ok ok, i dont want to be a stickler, but if you say im wrong about the whole picture thing then you are saying that dr. gelernter is wrong with his file browser because it uses pictures in a very graphical layout. because he knows more about how the mind works.see its not just me,images are processed faster than text. he is quite smart really.

:) I don't doubt that he is brilliant, and I'm not saying you are completely wrong; however, I am saying that for the standard above average computer user (which I assumptuously think linux users are) picture association is at the very least not any better than text association. How's that for conceding ;)

Cool

ok cool.

and i have seen some forums that alowed these like big ass avatars and that did strike me as being a bit too whimsical i guess

Brain Drop, can you shrink your sig please.

[size=.5] sure, hows that[/size]

.......more :-)

more power scotty
im givin her all shes got captain

I hate Avatars.

I am glad that this place doesn't have them.

Long live no avatars

:D

I like avatars, I usually use them... but anyway... it's ok with me.

who cares about avatars...check this site out!


http://biffstoejam.com/1.html

I normally don't slam people, but this is the only place where I've seen idiots like this. Maybe it's a good thing we don't have avatars.:p Well skilled usage of HTML though.:D