The case for avatars...
This forum appears to be a "no nonsense" kind of place.
(Fortunately, however, there is some light-hearted silliness to be found
in a few threads.)
But, if you guys are interested in speed and efficiency, let me just say
that it would be a whole lot easier (and faster) to scroll
through a thread to find a particular post (to which to reply), if avatars were in
the margin.
You may think avatars are silly, juvenile and beneath you.
But since I have come here, I have just discovered how handy
they really are (from another board in which I post).
I know 'avatars' won't ever happen here. Certainly not at a
board that's all in these lovely, light-hearted grey tones.
I do LIKE grey. But really..... isn't this a bit
much???
NO! NO!... I'm NOT complaining. This is just a
suggestion.
Love,
Carol
(Fortunately, however, there is some light-hearted silliness to be found
in a few threads.)
But, if you guys are interested in speed and efficiency, let me just say
that it would be a whole lot easier (and faster) to scroll
through a thread to find a particular post (to which to reply), if avatars were in
the margin.
You may think avatars are silly, juvenile and beneath you.
But since I have come here, I have just discovered how handy
they really are (from another board in which I post).
I know 'avatars' won't ever happen here. Certainly not at a
board that's all in these lovely, light-hearted grey tones.
I do LIKE grey. But really..... isn't this a bit
much???
NO! NO!... I'm NOT complaining. This is just a suggestion.
Love,
Carol
Comments
Originally posted by murbot
That's Strike 1, Carol.
Omigod! I'm on the pathway to banning already, and I just
got here?
Please say it ain't so!
Er...you were kidding, right? About strike 'one'?
(...it's really hard to tell...)
Carol
Originally posted by Carol A
You may think avatars are silly, juvenile and beneath you.
But since I have come here, I have just discovered how handy
they really are (from another board in which I post).
How are avatars handy?
They're annoying, just like huge sigs, just like too many smilies (which is why I have always had Nebagakid on ignore - I'm sure there are a ton of him in his post, but thankfully I never see them).
Originally posted by Cake
How are avatars handy?
They're annoying, just like huge sigs, just like too many smilies (which is why I have always had Nebagakid on ignore - I'm sure there are a ton of him in his post, but thankfully I never see them).
Well, I didn't even realize how handy avatars were until I starting scrolling through the mad cow thread, looking for several posts to which I wanted to reply.
It was just a stream of grey, with no way to tell (at a quick scrolling speed) when I found the poster I was looking for.
I actually had to memorize the 'width' of his post in order to find it fast.
And since I was intending to reply to four different posters in that thread, I had to do a lot of scrolling, with no way to quickly differentiate the posters at fast scroll speed.
SO - that's when I suddenly realized that avatars are actually quite handy little suckers after all.
Does any of this make sense?
Carol
PS In your honor, I used no smilies this time. (grin)
Yeah, the forums may seem a little drab at first, but everyone seems to love it that way. I do too. It really grows on you after a bit. It's not too high contrast; it's easy on the eyes. Believe me, there were some members raising hell when we mentioned that we were considering a design change some time ago. Some people clamored about how AppleInsider was, in their opinion, the best-looking forum on the Internet and, of course, those "threatening" to leave if we changed it.
As for avatars, Negabakid and Cake have the right idea. Avatars absolutely *kill* loading time. Right now, for example, I am reading the forums via a 6-year-old Mac on a 56k modem. Not only would loading several pages in tabs (standard operatng procedure for me) take forever to download, it would also eat up every last byte of RAM and compute cycle this baby has to spare. Avatars are resource HOGS. Not everyone is in my situation, but I do believe that we need to at least accommodate the needs of the people *running* the forums.
Load time. Load time. Load time. It's definitely one of the biggest of obstacles. Loading as many as 40 images coming from 40 different servers (based on the standard size of 40 posts per thread page) just gobbles bandwidth. Then, what about servers that 404 or stall or are just slow? More waiting as the pages appear to just hang endlessly. You might suggest just hosting the images on our own server, no? Well, we are already running on a practically nonexistant, razor-thin budget. We can't afford to start putting out 100x the bandwidth we are now, nor do we have space on the server to accomodate for images for 13,000+ members.
Then there's style. Granted, these images can be helpful in some cases, buit in the vast majority of sites that I have visited which allow these options, members have abused them with size, color, and animation overkill to where the overall appearance of the site itself is just a joke.
As you might can guess, this is an issue I've seen a handful of members bring up before.
Anyway, thank you for your comments. They are duly noted. I hope that you can find yourself getting better accustomed to how our site works. Your comments make perfect sense to me, but in this administration's opinion, the negative consequences of implementing avatars far outweighs the positive ones.
Oh, and as for murbot, he's just a big teddy bear.
Regards,
Brad
let's get them asap
Originally posted by Brad
Oh, and as for murbot, he's just a big teddy bear.
Regards,
Brad [/B]
Hi Brad -
Thanks for the reply. Isn't it around 2:30 AM where you are?
And I thought I was tired!
Okay, I understand about the loading time. And I had never actually seen the point of avatars until today, when I spent so much time scrolling through that thread looking for particular posts. I guess my eyes were already tired, too. That didn't help.
And about Murbot...if you say so. He didn't really sound like he was kidding to me, however. Maybe he has cabin fever, or something. That could explain why I have possibly already gotten on his last nerve.
If I am already rocking the proverbial boat, then I am in deep trouble. Because I am not one to keep my mouth closed when it might be wiser to do so, alas.
Again, thank you for the explanations. And as I said, I think grey is simply "lovely."
Carol
Originally posted by Carol A
And about Murbot...
what do you think?
for more murbot-induced ulcer-inflaming laughter see here
hell just look at his profile...
Originally posted by Paul
what do you think?
for more murbot-induced ulcer-inflaming laughter see here
hell just look at his profile...
Hi Paul -
Well, I've only been here a few hours, and I've already had to pony up a year's supply of beer to keep from being banned!
At this rate, I'll have to take out a second mortgage on my house before too long, to keep up with 'payments.'
Just had a thought! Maybe if I learn the words to O' Canada really fast......whaddaya think, eh???
Originally posted by Brad
Hi Carol,
Yeah, the forums may seem a little drab at first, but everyone seems to love it that way. I do too. It really grows on you after a bit. It's not too high contrast; it's easy on the eyes. Believe me, there were some members raising hell when we mentioned that we were considering a design change some time ago. Some people clamored about how AppleInsider was, in their opinion, the best-looking forum on the Internet and, of course, those "threatening" to leave if we changed it.
**** YOU, YOU FASCIST BASTARD
YOU RUINED THE LOOK OF THE FORUMS. SERIOUSLY, THE SHADE IS OFF SOMEHOW!!!
Originally posted by Brad
As for avatars, Negabakid and Cake have the right idea. Avatars absolutely *kill* loading time. Right now, for example, I am reading the forums via a 6-year-old Mac on a 56k modem. Not only would loading several pages in tabs (standard operatng procedure for me) take forever to download, it would also eat up every last byte of RAM and compute cycle this baby has to spare. Avatars are resource HOGS. Not everyone is in my situation, but I do believe that we need to at least accommodate the needs of the people *running* the forums.
Regards,
Brad
Brad - I have a 6 yr. old Mac at school. When, heaven forbid, I try to access a messageboard with avatars, the loading literally never finishes. That site just keeps loading the whole time I'm on it.
The first day I signed up at that board, a mod invited me to chat, and I tried to do so, but couldn't. I should have remembered that no one is allowed in chatrooms at school.
So all this time I have been thinking that my school Mac is being monitored because of my one attempt to chat, and that that was why it keeps loading. The no-chat thing is basically aimed at the students; and all the computers in the school are linked.
The teachers in all 32 of our schools ARE monitored, but probably randomly. So my question is, do you think that avatar-board loads constantly because my Mac is being monitored, and they have put some kind of slow-down feature on my access to that site? Or does it keep loading because of the avatars? The Mac doesn't do that on other boards. But none of the others have avatars.
Sorry to bore you with this question.
And thanks if you have any speculations.
Carol
Originally posted by Carol A
The teachers in all 32 of our schools ARE monitored, but probably randomly. So my question is, do you think that avatar-board loads constantly because my Mac is being monitored, and they have put some kind of slow-down feature on my access to that site? Or does it keep loading because of the avatars? The Mac doesn't do that on other boards. But none of the others have avatars.
More than likely, I expect the problem is with the avatars themselves. With avatars, if any of the servers stall out, the page will be in a perpetual "loading" state as it waits and waits for the download to finish. You could test this by disabling images in your browser. If the pages then load okay without them, you know the problem was with the avatars.
Though, it is also possible that the school district has done one of several things. It could have a black-list of servers that will refuse to load (thus possibly stalling that forum). A simple tweak in the DNS list can block any server of their wish. It could also have a sort of bandwidth cap. When you try loading the page with all the avatars, your computer will try to open a connection with every one of those servers. A cap could slow your download speed to a crawl, making the page take a very long time to load. NCSU, for example, has an upstream cap on all transmissions leaving campus. This makes it impossible to feed any more than about 3 KB/sec from anywhere except the main campus servers (on which we each have a paltry 50 MB of storage).
I really doubt you are being blocked personally. The threats of "monitoring" by the tech managers usually just means they keep an app running that logs basic activity. If it sees an abnormal amount of activity coming from a node or sees hits to a black-listed site, it notifies a technician via e-mail. I've seen these systems in "action" before (action being quite a laughable word choice). Most of the time, the technician just fires off a templated "warning" letter to the offender and business goes about as normal. It's usually more trouble than it's worth to implement restrictions on individuals.
Hope this helps.
Originally posted by Paul
what do you think?
for more murbot-induced ulcer-inflaming laughter see here
hell just look at his profile...
Hey Paul -
I just read Murbot's whole thread about the hard drive. At
first, I read with my mouth open, saying,"What?...WHAT??!!!"
I can't exactly remember at which point I started laughing.
What a priceless thread! Thank you so much for pointing it
out to me.
Carol
Originally posted by Jonathan
i like avatars
let's get them asap
OOH! Fight of the admins!!!
But seriously, what if you made a database of like, 20 or so APPLE pictures, limit being, oh, say, 80*80, that we could pick from? 80*80 wouldn't take long to load, and you get a sense of "personality" with it
Originally posted by Clayton Magnet
I don't know what's worse, avatars, or people posting with stupid ****ing small fonts. What the hell are people allowed to do that for? UGLY.
I use a different font in my posts. Download the font from the link in my sig and once you install it, you should be able to see it (i'm not posting in it now)
Get over yourself.