Custom avatars
 

every other forum has them...why not us..?

don't need them!!
they are really just a waste of hard drive space and
bandwidth.........

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up...it also makes the threads (and overall site) look cluttered and unproffesional.

This has been discussed in the past. The only person who has an avatar is jeremy - and it's his site. Avatars are horrible nasty things and make the board look cluttered and messy. Additionally, depending on the image used it is likely to offend some members. Also, if you are on dial up, downloading takes forever and at the end you are left with a post that just says "I agree" and has a huge pointless picture. For the same reason, we don't do images in posts or signatures.

Avatars add nothing to the board - they merely make it harder to d/l and make it look messy.

Unprofressional looking, ugly, waste space and bandwidth... they will never happen on this site. Its one of the strict rules the site admin even setup himself, no matter how many times ifs requested or asked, etc. So there's really no reason to argue or beg, its not gonna happen.

Try searching though, your not the first to ask this, there have been thousands of more members before you joined. ;)

And people frequently make avatars animated .gifs which really distracts from what you're reading.

I feel that Avatars tend to lessen the proffesionalism of a site. And yet I have seen some member at LQ have an avatar.

Not like jeremy's, his was right under his status(Member). It was a birthday cake I remember.

The birthday cake simply shows that it is the member's birthday. It goes after 24 hours and then doesn't return for a year :)

Oh wow. I am impressed :)

LQ never fails to amaze me :)

No, No, and No to avatars. Realistically they are only a "cool" or "good feature" to the individual person who selects the avatar, but they add absolutely nothing in terms of useful information. Honestly, would it make any difference if you posted a question and the responder's avatar was a dolphin vs. a unicorn vs. Lara Croft? No -- the only thing that matters is the content of the responder's post, and therefore avatars are a useless waste of bandwidth and resources.

If an individual is particularly enamored of a particular image, and wants to see it on a continual basis, he/she can easily make that image the wallpaper on his/her PC. Avatars add nothing at all however in terms of useful information about Linux-related questions, which is what this site is all about. Just my 2 cents. -- J.W.

So you're saying this site's intention is to be extremely friendly and at the same time extremely professional and utilitarian? I agree that avatars belong to other places, not here, but please loosen up a little. There are many people who enjoy communality and sociality. While avatars convey no useful information about linux problems and solutions, they are useful in other ways, like chitchat and hanging out with your buddies are. The Net can be a cold and faceless place at times.

You can turn off the signatures, which by the way are sometimes very flashy, so would it be too hard to turn off the avatars too? On many sites they are rather small (desktop-iconlike) and animated ones are banned. I'm just saying that there are many aspects to look at. Waste of resources is certainly one.

Simon

Well, it doesnt have to be hosted here, and there can be size file limits

As of one year ago LQ's data base only takes up about 300 MB, now if all users had avatars this number would sky rocket.

-Joey

There's no use trying to come up with suggestions, its not going to happen. And the images are already hosted off a different server from the main one.. but that wouldn't matter now would it.. ? ;)

just accept the cute little penguin as your avatar, and brag about how yours locks better then everyones else's (even tho your computer tells you they are exactly 100% the same bit per bit)