The say of the natives

[Jacob Bugge]

Quite a few times it has been claimed in these threads that the posters are few, do not represent the average, and so on.

Seemingly this leads the claimers to the conclusion that the strong support of the present forum appearance and the consequent strong objections to the complete change anticipated, and at least partially confirmed, does not represent a general opinion among forum members.

However, I am convinced that the objections to the anticipated change are widespread among the product forum members, especially among frequent posters, and especially among those contributing answers.

As far as I can see in the product forums that I contribue to or follow, at least 3/4 of the questions are answered by forum regulars such as myself that never, or very rarely, ask questions themselves. This means that we may be few in number, but not in terms of contributing to the forums.

Actually, only few regulars in the product forums post in the general forums at all, except perhaps on very rare occasions, but all the reactions I saw after the nightmare of the aborted forum merge were clear: Everyone resented not only the serious issues, but also the very format, which was not that far from what we are anticipating here, based upon the feedback so far.

All other product forum members post (questions) much less frequently, but stil, all the reactions I saw after aborted forum merge were the same.

Consequently, as far as I can see, what is posted here in these threads is the say of the natives.

[PJonesCET]

They don't have to be used, or you don't even have to use your own picture could be a picture of you favorite Pet, or 57 Chevy Belair Black with red interior. or maybe your Harley Hog. Or it could Even be a picture of the computer you are using. Avatars can be anything.

[PJonesCET]

> Anne said: From most of the examples that I have seen posted, it would be merciful to be spared that experience!

Why do you look like ZaZa Gabor, or Raquel Welch?? :-)

I may not be the handsomest fellow in the world, but I'm not by far the ugliest in The world.

[Guest]

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I didn't understand the sense of little pictures added to everything. Now however, I have 20 some little pictures in the corner of my computer that take up a whole lot less screen to identify programs that they will open than if it had to be spelled out.

In the browser, I've got pictures on most of the tabs as well, so I can quickly scan pictures to figure out which tab I want rather then having to read the associated words.

On many of the groups I'm on, they have avatars. I'm somewhat indifferent to them, especially if it's a site that allows numerous icons to use. But on groups where people use the same one consistently, I find that it's easy to skim past posts from people that I have little interest in, and focus more on the words of people that I value.

Places where they allow choices, people seem to pick ones that give a sense of the content of their post, and some of them can be quite appropriate.

Not sure yet which way the new software works, but if it allows people to not even have to read a name before they decide whether they are interested in a post, well, I expect that people will find that to have value in itself.

[Bob_Peters]

DorothyK:

I'm, sure we will all adapt to whatever happens.

However, I really dislike pictures/avatars etc. which force a huge portion of the available screen real estate to be blank as was evidenced in some of the examples shown here. The specific case I have in mind is where there are, say, 15 lines devoted to some relevant portion of a post with an equal height to the left which holds nothing but a small avatar with a lot of blank area under the avatar.

EDIT: Aaarrgh! I can't find the example I have in mind :(

[~graffiti]

>But on groups where people use the same one consistently, I find that it's easy to skim past posts from people that I have little interest in, and focus more on the words of people that I value.

I don't really care whether we have avatars or not but, I do the same. It DOES come in handy.

As long as the size is limited, I also don't find that they waste too much space. Anything more than a sentence would fill in the area that they may cause in the body of the post.

[Bill12]

In John's examples, the main problem I see is the space use when including avatars and extra stuff about a poster. For me, the first example had a 1 line post that took 10 lines because of the stuff on the left and in other cases there was a lot of blank space under the avatar as Bob mentioned. Dorothy has a reasonable argument also. The simplest way to resolve this issue (if the software permits it) is to allow the user to select in the preferences what they prefer to have viewed. It might actually be interesting to have a choice and folks be able to tailer the presentation to their one liking.

Some sites allow threaded versus other views, it would be nice to be able to add the avatar issue to the preferences. Then we would have no need to keep "yelling" about it here. Hopefully the test site will be available soon so we can all look at it. Maybe it will have selections, let's wait and see. Yes, I have my doubts, but I have also said my bit and figure I just need to wait to see. I am hearing a lot of broken records (OK, I guess this has become an age thing, I still have lots of LPs).

[Guest]

[Bill and I posted at the same time, and I think said some of the same things.]

What will make me unhappy will be the short, one line answers when the info in the left column insists on having 8 lines worth of height or whatever it might be... so you end up with a lot of blank space in an otherwise compact post. But, ya, if there is nothing to be done about it, we'll have to live with it.

What would be fun tho, would be if it allowed a user to have either no avatar or maybe a 1 pixel high one that would force the height to close up. Generally tho, I think most places reserve a minimum height for an avatar, whether there is one there or not.

[Guest]

Have others downloaded the Clearspace tryout? I'm trying, without success, to work with the Avatar stuff in mine. I can upload profile pictures but I haven't been able to get them to show up in posts. Wondering if others have tried it. Mostly I want to see what happens when I use a small icon image than is standard there. The default ends up being about 50 pixels high, btw. I want to use an image that is maybe 5 pixels high.

[Guest]

I don't care what any of you look like, sorry. I don't care what your cat looks like either. And I really don't need to see either with every post. Need touchy feely - go to YouTube or MySpace.

[Cindy-]

> Need touchy feely - go to YouTube or MySpace.

Breath of fresh air.

[Claudio_González1]

> I don't care what any of you look like, sorry. I don't care what your cat looks like either. And I really don't need to see either with every post. Need touchy feely - go to YouTube or MySpace.

I back every word of this. If we must have avatars, give us at least the power to turn them off if we wish.

By the way, in the forum I mentioned, most people change their avatars quite frequently. And people who don't provide an avatar -myself included- are shown with none, not with a generic one...

[Dirck]

And save us from animated gifs.

[Guest]

but, but...

[Guest]

One thing I did see in the docs is that animated gifs are converted to something else, forgot exactly what tho.

The reason I've been trying to dig in the docs is to see what is allowed within the software since John has said they aren't going to customize it. So far I haven't found a lot of answers, but I haven't had a whole lot of time either.

[Dirck]

I meant for avatars!

[Bob_Peters]

dave milbut:

That is too much!

:)

[Guest]

>I meant for avatars!

me too! :)

[PJonesCET]

> One thing I did see in the docs is that animated gifs are converted to something else, forgot exactly what tho.

Most like it would be a flash movie which takes up less bandwidth than than animated gif file.

[Kath-H]

I very much doubt it ;)

[Guest]

I looked it up again. Here it says:

>Since avatars are a highly used graphic in the system, we actually convert them to a static png to make sure they are available quickly to the app; therefore, we do not support animated gifs for avatars or profile photos.

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

So we are left with Cutesy Comic-Cuts space-wasters?

All the more reason for banning them all together, in that case.

[Guest]

The option exists to have members of communities upload their own. It can also be set up to moderate all avatar uploads. I don't know what decision has been made at this point tho.