The animated avatar debate.

[VorpalNonsense]

I've never had to put up with someone standing to my left holding a tablet just outside my peripheral vision with a load of flashing shit on it while I'm playing games.

Voted no.

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Like going to the movies and the guy sitting next to you is playing in his phone and the brightness is set to max.
You try to look away but you'll never stop noticing it.

The brain is programmed to prioritize motion perception over other concerns like color. That's why it becomes so distracting on a static page. For instance, go to this page:
http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/motion/motion.html

Your eyes will go straight to the gif even before the bright red square. Motion is significantly more attention grabbing than static images.

 

[Se7enSword]

Animated avatars add more flavor and character plus they can also be even better avatar quotes.

Personally i like that it's available here.

 

[_mail]

Not bad... not bad at all!
What's wrong with options?

 

[DoubleTake]

If they cant be made optional to see, then hell no.

 

[Ghos]

casts vote for preferences. sees result.

>:(

 

[Myradeer]

Please give us personal optio to disable them at minimum. If that's possible, I have no problem with whether they can be done or not!

 

[Island]

Thanks to this thread I now have an animated avatar.

(But I am ok with static images too...)

 

[faint]

I'm not sure XF gives you the option to disable animated avatars. At the same time, I don't know how much control admins have over the modification of these kinds of features.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Sooo many users with animated avatars now, this is all Hoo-doo 's doing.

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Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

I voted NO, by the way. I don't want my favorite posters all changing their avatars to something unrecognisable.

 

[EarthBound64]

Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

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Yes, I hate that animated avatars are allowed.

Well, alright, it doesn't bother me too much, since I have them disabled in my browser settings.
Many of them still look absurd due to sitting on the first animation frame, though.

 

[Chrome]

I don't really have a problem with them. Whether or not they're here changes absolutely nothing. That being said, they should either be banned or allowed. Letting some .gif avatars be allowed and others not be allowed is only going to lead to conflict as people will argue about what is and is not allowed.

Obviously the best solution would be allowing them to be disabled on an individual level, but I'm not sure if that's possible with Xenforo.

That being said, I have no clue how people find them distracting, or at least moreso than any other profile picture would be. Like, if this place wanted to be purely focused on discussion, than it would only be text and username. But that makes the website sound vapid and drab. I don't care what the discussion is, if your website is an abomination to the art of graphic design, then you're doing something wrong.

 

[Dennis8K]

It moves!

 

[Deleted member 721]

has to be .gif, png doesn't work in my experience

try posting the gif in here

the size limit is so restrictive pretty much any "real" picture looks terrible, thats why everyone has "animation" style avatars

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Its 46kb :(

 

[Ghos]

The size is limited anyway so why not

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Yeah. Most gifs won't work anyway. You gotta get creative with the file size limit.

 

[Lamptramp]

My immediate response is God no, they are ghastly and obnoxious, remove them from the site and fire them into the sun, I hate them, hatehathatehatehate!

However my reasoned, sensible response is that if people like them and don't mind my seething judgement let them use them. Just allow those of us with taste* to turn them off in preferences. Though I do like seeing peoples avatars so uploading a static one too so that "Filthy GIFFERS" aren't missing one.

* ;)

[edit] With all that said, I like yours Ghos, yours is fab

 

[EarthBound64]

That being said, I have no clue how people find them distracting, or at least moreso than any other profile picture would be.

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You have no clue how something moving is more distracting than something that isn't moving?

 

[Bob The Skull]

I absolutely adore subtly animated avatars, but I recognize that these are impossible to guarantee. So allow them and allow a user to opt in for static avatars. Then again, hoping for a majority of users to adopt nice, subtly animated avatars is probably only a pipe dream.

 

[Uno Venova]

I wouldnt really consider 50% Solid Nay and 50% three different answers really"half and half." Lumping all three of those options together as in favor isn't honest. It's especially egregious to consider Dont Care as in favor. It shouldnt even be an option, people with no opinion whatsoever could have just not voted. They're not for or against anything.

Like, nobody went to their local polls on election day to write in "dont care." People who stayed home were not included in the results or automatically attributed to one side.

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Okay, still less than half are against it was the main point.

 

[Speevy]

I'd like the option to hide all users with avatars. This is not a serious post.

 

[Yoshichan]

(your avatar looks grumpy :P)

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:lol :lol :lol.

 

[lucebuce]

All I know is, this is one of the best avatars I've ever had.

 

[Chrome]

You have no clue how something moving is more distracting than something that isn't moving?

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Not to a degree that's significant enough to keep the static one but not the moving one.

 

[alr1ght]

It should be a straight disallowal, otherwise you have some posters avatar quoting/commenting on avatar/etc. Not to mention how badly the first frame on a gif will look to everyone blocking animated avatars.

 

[Deleted member 2171]

As long as the avatar file size limit stays low then I'm indifferent. The only thing is they shouldn't be annoying or have flashing.

What I like is having a random avatar, which I have on forums that still allow external URL avatars:

http://www.fyrewulff.com/fdc/rand/paava.png

, but it's understandable why few forums allow external URL avatars anymore. It'd be possible to do it native, and could contribute the code to do so if wanted.

It should be a straight disallowal, otherwise you have some posters avatar quoting/commenting on avatar/etc. Not to mention how badly the first frame on a gif will look to everyone blocking animated avatars.

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now is actually a good time to get rid of the 'avatar quote' meme anyway

 

[EarthBound64]

Not to a degree that's significant enough to keep the static one but not the moving one.

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So you do have a clue, you just don't think that it's significant.
The answer is simple: Some people's level of significance is lower than yours.

 

[alr1ght]

As long as the avatar file size limit stays low then I'm indifferent. The only thing is they shouldn't be annoying or have flashing.

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The low file size limit guarantees all of them to be badly animated and stick out.

 

[Entryhazard]

especially for some of us mobile browsers navigating with data

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Mobile era means I don't want it.

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since people on mobile have different limits on speed

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and are just more to load on the server

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having that much more is going to destroy the servers

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No thanks. I don't need to waste data/bandwidth while on my phone.

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So much disinformation
Animated avatars are under the same size limit of static avatars so it changhes NOTHING to server strain and data usage

Unless they are taxing to the servers

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Would that not impact bandwidth too for mobile users?

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But if it works and keeps the load and bandwidth

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if they actually are a strain on the servers

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If the servers can handle it

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It's not a problem beacuse of the same size cap

But that means mods would have to individually police every user's avatar because there's no way to filter that stuff out automatically.
Aint nobody got time for that.

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To be fair, we have report buttons now. The community could police itself by reporting posts with users who have offending avatars.
Might clog the report queue though but it's an option.

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Pretty much, yeah. Plus, how do you even draw the line between what one user finds tasteful and another finds annoying and distracting? Now people who get their animated avatars nerfed are going to start saying "But THAT user got to keep his avatar and its more annoying than mine was!" How do you even respond to personal taste?
Another way to frame this debate: Hey mods! Do you like getting reports? How many more reports do you want to get a day? ...is it a lot? We can definitely do that for you with Animated Avatars™!

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On principle you'd have the same problem and bother with static avatars featuring questionable content.
Someone could put as an avatar something borderline NSFW and a report would be needed to take it off, and being borderline falls under the Mod's judgement would lead to some disputes anyway.
All of this regardless of being animate

 

[EarthBound64]

All I know is, this is one of the best avatars I've ever had.

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[Ogni-XR21]

Look! I found my halloween avatar!

 

[Deleted member 437]

Maybe an option to click someones profile, and from there you can select "ignore avatar". Then you can kind of pick and choose which avatar is ok and which is too distracting. I've only seen a few where I'm like "yeah, if I could block that one, I would".

 

[Xe4]

I wouldnt really consider 50% Solid Nay and 50% three different answers really"half and half." Lumping all three of those options together as in favor isn't honest. It's especially egregious to consider Dont Care as in favor. It shouldnt even be an option, people with no opinion whatsoever could have just not voted. They're not for or against anything.

Like, nobody went to their local polls on election day to write in "dont care." People who stayed home were not included in the results or automatically attributed to one side.

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Half of the forum is against them in any way shape or forum.

18% are for them, and the rest don't care or want an option.

By far the most people think they shouldn't be allowed in any way shape or form, which is where I stand.

They're really ugly and only allowing frame 1 of the GIF doesn't help much. They also encourage bad avatars and make to form look tacky as hell.

 

[Dark Knight]

Please keep them. Allows for more expression. Maybe give others the option to not see them or see a still image version of them if they don't like animated avatars. Honestly though there are tasteful animated avatars that work just fine and look great, so not allowing them because some people don't like them would be lame.

There should be some rules though, like no flashing or anything too obnoxious perhaps?

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Not a fan of needless animations. They're tacky at best and a distraction at worst. That said the best option in my opinion is to always give the user the option. So my vote goes to a setting in preference that enables/disables animation in avatars. If that is not possible then my vote goes to disabling them.

 

[A Syrian Communist]

It makes ERA look like every other rando forum in a way, but at least we don't have signatures. I'll probably just turn them off.

 

[NinjaGarden]

Really classes the place up

 

[Ghos]

I absolutely adore subtly animated avatars, but I recognize that these are impossible to guarantee. So allow them and allow a user to opt in for static avatars. Then again, hoping for a majority of users to adopt nice, subtly animated avatars is probably only a pipe dream.

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[BGBW]

The flaw with animated avatars is that about 90% of people can't gif well.

For an avatar, the first thing it should be doing is looping well. If it doesn't do that, then the jerkiness of the last frame flipping back to the first will constantly annoy anyone looking at the board. Already seen examples of this in this thread.

Timing is also an important factor; I don't want to pick on anyone, but it's an example that's been playing in front of me the whole time I've been typing this - Lashley's current smoking Snake avatar would work much better if the first frame was frozen for a longer length of time so it was almost a static avatar with a subtle bit of movement every now and then.

I'm not going to condemn them, because if done well they can be fun. After all, I love the fact I'm one of those rare users who still has an animated Twitter avatar. But the truth is, they are something that can go wrong oh so easily.

 

[Kyle Cross]

All this hate towards animated avatars. You all just need to grab some maracas and have a good time.

 

[Mengetsu]

I really hope they stay and we can make a compromise to make everyone happy. It's nice seeing them again.

 

[Zalusithix]

Primary vote: Nay, because they make the place look like a bad trip to the 90's where <blink> and <marquee> tags reigned. It's unprofessional looking and can turn off new members more than attract them.
Secondary vote: If we must have the abominations, allow users to disable them throughout the site.

 

[Ghos]

The low file size limit guarantees all of them to be badly animated and stick out.

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nah

edited to be 44kb and it's still smooth.

 

[Gareth]

I don't plan to change my avatar but I like 'em.

 

[VorpalNonsense]

On principle you'd have the same problem and bother with static avatars featuring questionable content.
Someone could put as an avatar something borderline NSFW and a report would be needed to take it off, and being borderline falls under the Mod's judgement would lead to some disputes anyway.
All of this regardless of being animate

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It's not the same because it's easy to differentiate the line between SFW and NSFW. People generally know what they can and cannot use as an avatar, most users follow these guidelines, and it's easy to enforce if someone breaks the rules.

My response was in reference to people saying "just report the annoying flashy ones" but there's no accounting for taste. How do you even draw the line between what one user finds tasteful and another finds annoying and distracting? Now the rules are inconsistent, avatars are getting reported all over the place, and people who get their animated avatars nerfed are going to start saying "But THAT user got to keep his avatar and it's worse than mine was!" How do you even respond to personal taste?

You can't. So either you stick to static avatars or you just let everyone have whatever psychedelic 420 blaze it avatar they want.

 

[Clipjoint]

Animated avatars are too easy to abuse by the biggest attention seekers. Culturally, it sends a bad message. I vote no.

 

[LifeLine]

is there actually a setting to turn those off so I don't see them?

 

[Ghos]

or you just let everyone have whatever psychedelic 420 blaze it avatar they want.

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For

 

[Sou Da]

Nah they're a distraction.

Animated avatars are too easy to abuse by the biggest attention seekers. Culturally, it sends a bad message. I vote no.

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[Deleted member 721]

Test

Edit: It doesnt look good so small :/

 

[Kripton]

As long as you can choose if you want to see or not the animations its fine by me.
If the first image of a GIF image is really bad at least it was my fault, if i really want to see someone's GIF i can always turn it back on again.
I dont see any disadvantage with that option tbh.

 

[VorpalNonsense]

There we go. PERFECT.

Please respect my individually, you can't police personal taste without running into conflicting rule enforcement. Welcome to the new ERA.
(For demonstration purposes only. I'll shoot my avatar in the head shortly, I can't take this shit either.)