[Spoon]

The little person icon that links to the profile seems pretty redundant considering clicking on someone's name also does exactly that

[Goober5000]

HLP's history with avatars is immaterial

Why?

with a giant picture under your name comes giant responsibility

Other way around, actually.

It is traditional in many, many places (insert phrase here) to have avatars. This has not resulted in the sky falling in on them or caused them to spontaneously combust. The sole reason to value this tradition more than any other tradition is the belief that it makes us unique and better.

There are a number of problems with that last sentence.  We're not conducting a ranking of traditions here; and traditions are valued for multiple reasons, not reducible to just one.  And tradition is valued because it makes us us.  It is not necessarily unique, and whether it is better is a matter of opinion.

I've been a member of multiple online communities.  Some don't use avatars at all.  Some use avatars only for a subset of people (such as those involved in important site projects).  Some use avatars for everybody.  Of those who use avatars for everybody, some of them are very mature and level-headed, and some are completely off-the-wall.  (I've noticed that the level-headed communities usually have level-headed avatars and the off-the-wall communities have ridiculous avatars.)

Lol, I just went and removed a bunch of mine.. though it seems MSN was disabled at some point, but I still have data there. I can't remove it.

I've re-enabled the MSN option and removed your MSN tag.

But I agree. The fact we have a minecraft profile button at all is a merit for every other game out there to have one. It sets a precedent.

I believe Sandwich is the one who both added Minecraft and removed MSN.  You'd have to ask him.

[General Battuta]

Tradition is important to the extent that it creates benefit. This thread has evaluated the benefit and found it insufficient. Anything beyond that is irrelevant: traditions are not valuable for their own sake.

The consensus has been clear for a while now.

[Mongoose]

The thing is, I can fully understand why the ancient powers that be went against avatars originally, because anyone involved with forums during the early 2000s and the broadband boom knows how many of them turned those lifted bandwidth restrictions into visual monstrosities.  (Animated image sigs *shudder*)  In that sort of environment I can fully see why Setekh & Co. went for a much cleaner look that placed all the emphasis on post content.  But the thing is, that was more than a decade ago, and even far less savory sites than HLP don't look nearly that bad anymore.  Our demographics skew old enough that no one is going to do anything eye-shattering, and a simple little rectangular image (that is optionally visible no less!) won't do anything visually that people with 5 or 6 project badges haven't been doing for years anyway.

[Axem]

So it's been a few weeks since the poll opened and I've been keeping an eye on the results. No one else has put a vote down in the last week and the results are pretty clear.

80% of respondents are in favor of some type of avatar while 20% either would like HLP to remain avatar-less for non-admins or just don't care. While I think we all recognize that HLP is not in any way a democracy, I think the poll shows that the members of HLP do not feel as strongly for the "admin-only avatar" tradition any longer. I mean you can see the shift from kara and Battuta having anti-avatar comments that Goober quoted to the pro-avatar comments they have now as further proof. A good number of forum veterans have voiced support for having them too.

Now I don't think avatars will bring HLP any sort of new found prosperity, but it certainly won't kill HLP, or turn things for the worse. HLP will still be HLP, just maybe a little more colorful. (And they are so easy to turn off if you don't like them, you can even turn them off right now if you like (Forum Profile, Look and Layout, Don't Show Users Avatars))

If we're talking about traditions and being unique about them, I just don't think this uniqueness of avatars to admins is all that... great. A majority of forums allow them, and so while the fact that we restrict it to the highest level of staff may be unique, it's just not something that's all that interesting. It just benefits 8 people and that exclusivity doesn't add a lot to the general culture.

(What I think is interesting and unique is our project badge system. It benefits a larger number of people and if you asked me what are some of the things that makes HLP unique, I'd instantly go with that. That's an HLP tradition I would digitally give my life for.)

So I'd like to propose, that when HLP does its server switcharoo/upgrade, we celebrate by opening up the avatar gates for everyone.

[Black Wolf]

Sigh. Well, whatever. They will default to off, correct?

[Spoon]

So I'd like to propose, that when HLP does its server switcharoo/upgrade, we celebrate by opening up the avatar gates for everyone.

Sigh. Well, whatever. They will default to off, correct?

Why would they be? That would mean the majority would have to turn them on instead of the minority having to turn them off. That's pretty backwards.

[z64555]

great. now I gotta make a version of my avatar that won't clash with the site's color scheme. 

[Goober5000]

So I'd like to propose, that when HLP does its server switcharoo/upgrade, we celebrate by opening up the avatar gates for everyone.

There are some ramifications of this proposal besides the obvious:

1) Do you really mean everyone, not merely those participating in a project (whether hosted/non-hosted, FreeSpace/non-FreeSpace, or whatever)?
2) Do you propose to allow users to upload their own avatars, to select from a pool of avatars already uploaded, or to link them from offsite?
3) Uploaded avatars are stored in the same folder as attachments, so they would count towards attachment space limits and bandwidth.  This is less of a problem than it was 10 years ago but should still be noted.
4) How should avatars be moderated?  I expect the majority of avatars would be fine, but there will undoubtedly be a subset of users who will try to push the bounds of acceptability.

[Scotty]

For ****'s sake Goober this isn't a complicated issue stop trying to make it one.  Yes everyone, let people upload, who cares, and let moderators actually moderate.

There, done.

[Buff Skeleton]

I'm still down for the "make everyone have a dog avatar, even if they don't want one" method

[z64555]

Ok, I've got my avatar ready to go whenever.



[Edit] Hm, looks like I need to tweak it a tiny bit.

[Axem]

1) Yes, everyone. Everyone, everyone, everyone. For displaying positions of HLP staff or special merit, there are still the special member groups with the badges. If someone doesn't want one, they don't need to have one. That's their choice.

2) Users would upload avatars. I don't think space will be an issue. Your avatar is 11kb, mine is 25kb. But to give some sort of worst case scenario, let's go with 30kb being the average size. If 1000 people upload avatars, that's 30MB of extra space taken up. (If all 15,000 members uploaded 30kb avatars that's 450MB of space taken up)

3) I think avatar space and bandwidth would be drop in the bucket. People uploading 1920x1080 png attachments or the monthly HLP newsletter probably create more of a resource drain. If it takes away from the allowed attachment space, could we boost it a bit?

EDIT: Having looked in the admin panel at the avatar settings, attachments and avatars are specified to be in separate folders. There does not appear to be a total filesize limit for avatars like there is with attachments.

4) We should come up with a list of content rules on what would be allowed in an avatar and how large they can be. They'd be simple and clear. If someone is violating it, the staff would bring it up and act as required (either asking to change or in extreme cases it could be removed). I don't think we actively police signatures, but if something came up, we'd act there too, wouldn't we?

[Colonol Dekker]

When's the soft launch then?

[Axem]

Nothing has been decided upon yet.

[Goober5000]

There's currently an avatar size limit of 250x250 pixels, which is about the size of the image z64555 posted.  I think that's a bit too large.  Axem, you have the widest avatar among the admins at 140 pixels.  It matches up perfectly with a row of badges 5 icons wide, which I'm assuming was the intention.  It also has a nice aspect ratio of 1.4.  So140x100 seems like a good limit.

Originally the avatars and attachments shared the same directory, but there is now an option to either have them share directories or be located in separate directories, and currently the latter option is selected.  That must have been added in a recent SMF update.  That's good news for space limits, because it means that attachment maintenance won't be triggered by people uploading avatars.

And yes, the attachment space limit can be modified.  It used to be 50 MB; it's 100 MB currently.

Good point about comparing avatar moderation to signature moderation.  I don't think they are exactly analogous because avatars are more prominent, but there are similarities.

[Axem]

Yes, 250x250 is way too big.

I did indeed intend my avatar to fix across 5 badges to fit nicely (I even turned in my old FoTG badge so I wouldn't have a weird 1 badge hanging on the second row). Mind you it is reported that sometimes that the width can sometimes fit as many as 6 badges... (I can't reproduce that personally though)

Also from that link I have to agree with Luis' sentiment (and I think PH mentioned a similar idea) that avatars should be 5 badges by 2 or 3 badges high, so 140-150ish by 60 or 100. I do like the greater height you get with 100, but 60 isn't bad either.

EDIT: Now that I'm home, I can do some exact pixel measurements

To fit perfectly across 5 badges, the width should be 141 pixels (each badge is 25px, 25*5 = 125, plus 4px of padding, 4*4=16px, 125+16=141px)

Spoon had done mockups for 150x60, which I guess are 10px too wide but they still give a good indication to what 140x60 would look like.

[z64555]

Meh, I prefer side-bar avatars that have a W/H ratio that's close to 1:1 or 4:3. Signature avatars go 16:9 or longer.

[Goober5000]

And on that note, I realized that my avatar is 128x128 pixels square, which wouldn't actually fit in 140-150x60-100.  Why not use 140x140?

[Axem]

That's also an option. Personally to me though, there's this admittedly subjective quality to liking horizontal layouts more than vertical ones. I think 120 px would be the tallest before it starts to look not as great in my eyes. That comes from the avatar plus the height of a row of badges, 120+25=145px high, so its roughly square at that point.

I think the original idea for the quite rectangular avatars was to try and minimize what visual space that gets added since that was a concern. So I think if we went 140 square, we might want to streamline some of the other parts of the side bar to recover some of the vertical space? (maybe remove the 2^n counter?) An extra 60 doesn't add that much, 100-125 seems fine, 140 might be too tall. Again all IMO. I'd like to know what other people think. I wouldn't oppose 140 high.

It's hard which size would be the sweet spot without more mock-ups. (I'm not a graphical designer, but I play one in my dreams)

I can try making some up with different sizes tomorrow (or someone else can if they wish)