14 replies to this topic

[elaks]

I'm always annoyed on forums, by people who don't have avatars or images in their signature to identify themselves. Topics with rows after rows of people talking with nothing but their name's to identify themselves gets abit tiresome.
Maybe it's because I've become lazy, but the only real forum members I can remember are ones with distinguishing avatars/sigs. The rest are just a blur of random names- even if they have over 500 posts. That's why I think it should be necessary for HOSTED members to have avatars/sigs. Just an idea.

[truefusion]

Well, what do you do when they change their avatar and sig(s) and it appears as if they're a new user? When and if that happens, does that bother you much, if any? Have you ever changed your avatar and/or sigs before? And what happens when you find two users with the same avatar but no sig? How do you handle that?

[Azriel_Stormbringer]

And think about server load too...lots of images use lots of bandwidth. Its possible to crash forums with enough of that going on.

[rvalkass]

Personally I use usernames a lot more often than sigs and avatars to recognise users. For example, a few users have rotating signatures so they don't appear the same too often, which makes identification quite difficult.

[Tetraca]

elaks, on Jul 19 2007, 02:37 PM, said:

I'm always annoyed on forums, by people who don't have avatars or images in their signature to identify themselves. Topics with rows after rows of people talking with nothing but their name's to identify themselves gets abit tiresome.
Maybe it's because I've become lazy, but the only real forum members I can remember are ones with distinguishing avatars/sigs. The rest are just a blur of random names- even if they have over 500 posts. That's why I think it should be necessary for HOSTED members to have avatars/sigs. Just an idea.

For the qbasic community, theres an entire community that thinks signatures and avatars are a complete waste. They say that they don't really have any point and that text is just as good, if not better - it doesn't take as much to load, it's simple, et cetera.

[HoRuS]

Sometimes it's easier to identify people by their avatrs and sigs, true...
But its also true that those consume a lot of bandwith and cause serverstress.

I also think avatars and sigs brighten up a forum,
maybe there's a way to have a limit on the size in kb a sig or avatar contains for users...

[elaks]

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maybe there's a way to have a limit on the size in kb a sig or avatar contains for users...

That would certainly remove the problem of large amounts of bandwidth being taken up.

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For the qbasic community, theres an entire community that thinks signatures and avatars are a complete waste. They say that they don't really have any point and that text is just as good, if not better - it doesn't take as much to load, it's simple, et cetera.

I'm all for that. In my spare time I post in BBSs, so absolutely no images at all. But when some users in a topic have avatars and others don't; I find all my attention is drawn to the person with the avatar.

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Well, what do you do when they change their avatar and sig(s) and it appears as if they're a new user? When and if that happens, does that bother you much, if any?

Doesn't bother me, it's unlikely a user is going change their avatar more than three or four times a week- and that' only extreme cases. Once I see a username, I look at their avatar and allocate it to their name and posts.

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Have you ever changed your avatar and/or sigs before? And what happens when you find two users with the same avatar but no sig? How do you handle that?

I will admit, problems to arise when people share the same avatar. For instance, in my last forum (Not mine) there were about a thousand members. One of the mods sent a message to me and friends saying it would be funny for us to change avatars to the admins. So we did. And for a whole week we had the same avatar as the root admin. Let me say; this caused havok.

This topic has given me alot to think about. Thanks for the feedback. The problems caused by forced avatars seem to outway the pros. Well- I suppose it's best to make thinks purely text based instead to make the username really mean something.

[velma]

I liked the idea of keeping sigs/avatars to identify members but sometimes the members have really slow internet so they usually switch off all images so that the pages load faster (personal experience) So it might not show to them.

I switch off sigs and avatars in my settings so that I can know when a member tries to cheat the credit system by including pictures in their post to increase credits so I rely more on the person's name than the sigs and avatars.

[Plenoptic]

velma, on Jul 20 2007, 07:08 AM, said:

I switch off sigs and avatars in my settings so that I can know when a member tries to cheat the credit system by including pictures in their post to increase credits so I rely more on the person's name than the sigs and avatars.

Velma you can just look for the dashes in the post to tell whether it's part of the signature or not. But then again if you are looking at every post that could be time consuming.

As for the topic at hand, I don't think everybody likes signatures, or really want to spend the time making them. That'd sort of push people that come here into having to do more than just receive credits. Although most people who have posted in this topic has signatures, some people probably don't know how to even add them. I think it'd cause problems. If all 30,000+ members here have a signature though, wouldn't it be hard to identify who's who still anyway? Sure not all are active but a lot are, and then you'd only remember the ones that you see the most.

[truefusion]

Plenoptic, on Jul 20 2007, 07:58 AM, said:

Velma you can just look for the dashes in the post to tell whether it's part of the signature or not. But then again if you are looking at every post that could be time consuming.

No you can't, people cheat that too. They actually copy the exact amount of hyphens that is made to seperate their sig from the post! I've caught some people using fake signatures before. I don't roam around the forums with signatures on for that reason and 'cause some people's signatures are just insane, like mine.