This was announced in the Site Feedback forum, under the hijacked header "NO Avatars Please!!"

Avatars are now officially banned from SPCR.

The few members using avatars in their sigs are requested to remove them. There are lots of other sites where such avatars are welcome, go crazy there, but we would prefer they disappear from SPCR. They do not add any value to anyone's posts. This is an issue that I have been discussing with Alistair as well as long-time members of the forums who volunteer their time and energy. There are lots of other ways to express yourself here -- and in the world at large.

We would prefer that people do this voluntarily. I don't like playing policeman, it's not a welcome job, but it seems to come occasionally with the territory.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Mike Chin
SPCR Forum Admin

So let it be written...So let it be done.

Thanks Nathan.

Just a question of clarifacation, are we talking just text now, or are the various F@H stat reporters still ok?

What I am opposed to are cluttering of the forums by images and information that don't have any relevance to SPCR. Seems to me that folding info is at least some what relevant & not as distracting as an arbitrary oft-repeated image.

Obviously people will tell me if they disagree.

I disagree with you MikeC! the folding info is not "somewhat relevant", its very relevant, and in many cases, more relevant than the content of the post!

what's the problem with some pic in the sig ? Do they distract the eye or fill the drives ?

I think the main reason was because they were a distraction. This is a mature forum and if I recall correctly, some people were abusing their avatar privileges. Also in retrospect it made the forum look a lot less 'classy'.

You stay classy SPCR forum!

I agree. Even some text-based 100% relevant sigs are distracting because of their large font and excessive length...

Yippee - great job Mike, I hate avatars, I just wish all forums had an option in view to disable them, I think it does give spcr a more mature look and they just get under my skin and distract me.

Speaking of sigs, everyone sigs containing computer components kind of makes it hard to search the forums for information about those components, since any sig containing that component shows up as a hit as well.

Is there any way to search forums without hitting the sig text?

POLIST8=Ramses=Yul Brenner

I always liked that character.

i agree with mike as well. it makes everything look clean, and is dialup friendly.

my choice would be either to allow all avitars or non at all. not evn small ones. as you cant really be laying down 50 rules for avitars.

and no.... i dont want to get firefox.

I love Mozilla.

I just find it funny that this topic is being discussed again.

I cared at one time, but I don't anymore.

I'm a little confused. If you don't want avatars, why not disable them?

http://www.phpbb.com/support/guide/#section3_2_2_5

It is. But just because the feature is turned off in phpBB does not mean people can't have images showing up in their sigs.

ok, this thread is old but I think there is need to be a reconsideration about the avatars ban.

Avatars have many benefits, one of them that is really needed for SPCR is that you will no longer need to read every user name and you will not need to memorize them. It will be just as easy as looking at a picture and that user will be registered in your brain. Next time you dont even need to look at the avatar, just read the post and your brain will scan the avatar without you knowing it.

On this forum most of the times when I'm reading a thread I quick scan for senior memeber's posts to see what they have to say about the subject, what they say is always more accurate than what the newbies say, for example I do trust MikeC when he says something is quiet as everybody has a diffrent meaning for the word Quiet.

I read people saying that this is a mature forum and avatars are not welcome. Well if its a mature forum then let its mature users to use mature avatars. and if a kid shows up with Pokiman avatar you'll know how to deal with him.

Mike, I would really appreciate if the avatars are enables again, and before saying yes or no please see what others have to say about it.


Thanks for your time.

My opinion, no avatars. Just skim over the names on the left side of the post. It's not like it's THAT hard to see the user name, there's no clutter to confuse your eye from seeing their name. There's even a post count if you're looking for "senior" members. If you're into particular posters, again, you can see their name quite easily. More importantly, there's no guarantee people won't use the same avatar, so it makes your argument baseless since there's no guarantee a pretty picture will automatically equal user X instead of user Y, they, or several other users, may be using the same avatar. Users on slower connections will also have to download a bunch of pictures everytime they click on a thread, making use of the forums even slower and more frustrating for them, chewing up bandwidth they would rather be minimizing for the sake of time and efficiency.

I totally agrre with you spolitta.
And the avatars won't make the forum look bigger, since they can be smaller than the room that a nickname takes.



It's easier to see an avatar, even it it's just 50x50.


Posts mean nothing.


I'm in several forums and this never happened.


Not true, they would only have to download them the first time, and avatars can be as small as 5KB, so an entire page with 20 posts is going to be 100KB of avatars.
On the other hand, once you get the avatars, they're stored in your cache, so you won't download them every time you get into a thread, all you're going to download are the avatars that aren't in your cache yet.

This is what spolitta said:

So he thinks post count means something.
So? The names are in bold. I have an easier time seeing who a poster is by looking at their name, instead of trying to memorize who uses what avatar instead of looking at their name.
And I've been on several forums where this did happen.

Anyway, SPCR is geared to being minimalist and efficient. A bunch of avatars would make the forums look tacky. That's why they were banned in the first place.

come on man, if you are unsure about something just ask, you dont have to put the words in my mouth. I never said anything about the post count and I never meant higher number of posts when I said seniors.

I say no avatars.

If you're capable of reading the contents of the post, you're also capable of scanning/reading the posters' username to the left of it.

I read/post on dozens of forums every day and I really appreciate the clean look of the avatar/sig-less forums like SPCR. There's less crap to break your concentration and less scrolling needed to read the threads.

I think SPCR should develop a complex scheme where for each post you make, you get another pixel! So first posters can only choose a colour while someone who has 9 posts can make a crude tic-tac-toe board!


To be extra tricky, you could require everyone to always use each of their available pixels, thus everyone will have to update their avatar every time they post!

I'm probably break 4 forum rules with this post and will soon be banned....

I frankly miss my usual parrot avatar......almost nobody knows what a "Bluefront" actually is.

The problem with this is prime numbers...

Well then your avatar has to be a line, I'm sure people can come up with all sorts of interesting arrangements of alternating colours that speak loads to who you are and what you believe.

I like the add a pixel per post message. I can be a little [by my scale ] sarcastic at times, and this poked a little fun at the situation without being too over the top. But I think protocol would have required a smiley face, and not just any smiley face, but a huge, animated, 50 MB smiley face. [Obligatory smiley ]

I completely agree with the no avatar rule. This forum is not for a fashion show by those who post (although it might be for their computer systems, some of the "cable-gami" in some of the sytem pics opened my eyes to what is possible in cable routing), readers come here for technical information about computer system design decisions. As has been said, the names in bold at the left already stand out, and can be scanned in no time flat.

Would it make the information any more valuable if there was a message from MikeC over a cute puppy vs. a message from MikeC over some anime character?

Just as in building a system, keep the functionality and leave out the noise.

Maybe we could come over all Web 2.0, and have voting on forum posts?