Netiquette - Avatars, sigs and banners

[Smivs]

Following on from this thread, perhaps we need a (friendly) debate regarding what is considered good practice where images etc are concerned. This is a free and open Board, but without impinging on personal choice, some guidelines might be useful.
Big sig banners can be jarring on the eyes, particularly those with overly bright colours, and also take up a lot of screen real estate which is a particular problem for small scren users. Also the forum pages seem to have a maximum number of posts rather than a maximum length which means that lots of very long posts or posts padded with huge sigs mean you have miles of page to scroll down in some cases.
Another area of discontent are animations.
Now I have been guilty of both in the past. A long time ago I had a large sig banner promoting one of my OXPs and I have to confess I also participated in the animated Insect Avatar wheeze of a few months ago. I am now a reformed character and promise not to do it again

Could I therefore be so bold as to offer some guidelines? These are not firm proposals, more a starting point for debate and are open to discussion of course, and ultimately members are free to ignore them.

Avatars:-
These are not normally a problem, but should be generally acceptable in that they should not cause offence (or eyestrain!). Some members do find animations annoying so please consider this when choosing an avatar. There is a big difference between Thargoids 'headbanger' and say a technicolor flashing butterfly for example.

Sigs:-
As above for text sigs - nothing offensive. It might be best if these normally relate to the member (like my sig), or their Oolite activities (such as cim's OXP links) although links to other outside interests etc are OK if they are of a 'biographical' nature like elements of DaddyHoggy's sig).

Sig images/banners:-
These seem to be the main 'problem' area. If used I would suggest that these be both small (max 200x100px) and subtle, with no animation, and relate to the member or their Oolite activities. El Viejo's Cody's dragon is good example of this.
I can see an area of contention here though - the Elite:Dangerous banners. Those members who are involved with this project are clearly proud of their involvement and want to promote both their part in the project and the game itself. This is understandable. However these banners are undeniably big and bright, and as they are regarding/promoting a commercial enterprise some would argue that they are tantamount to spam.

So those are my thoughts and suggestions to get the debate rolling. Obviously thay do reflect up to a point my own opinions so what do the rest of you think?
I don't think anything should be enforced, but hopefully some generally acceptable guidelines will come out of this thread, and then the members can comply with them or ignore them as they see fit.

[maaarcooose]

It would be good to gauge opinion on these matters.

I've always kind of liked the clean looks of this forum. Very few banner sigs to be seen and nice unique avatars.

I personally would rather not have lots of banner sigs as these do make for annoying usage on a mobile over 3G. I'm not totally against them, I just think they are a little overused on some other forums. It gets annoying when someone has posted a 3 word comment 9 times on the same page and has a large signature banner. If your sig is longer than your post, FAIL!!!!
It's a complete waste of time and bandwidth.

!m!

[Rogue7414]

Crap, I didn't mean to open up a can of worms with my previous post. The main reason I was asking about the banners is down to the point that Smivs made about backing Elite Dangerous, I have backed it and was until today wanting to put up a banner stating this fact but now I'm not too sure as from comments that have been put up on the previous post that started off this new thread tend to be on the negative side on their views to banners. Luckily I'm pretty bad at understandin how to get these things up anyway so I'll probably end up banner free!

[Smivs]

Crap, I didn't mean to open up a can of worms with my previous post.

No worries We like a good debate around here and somebody has to start them, even unwittingly sometimes. Add the banner if you really want to - there are plenty of them already! - and there are no 'rules' as such. I only started this thread as this is a subject that does come up from time to time and it just seemed sensible to bring all the strands together in one thread.
Even if the majority agree on a set of guidelines they are only that, guidelines, so folks are free to do what they want.

[gizmo]

Crap, I didn't mean to open up a can of worms with my previous post.

Well, someone had to open it up ...

Back on topic: I really don't care about sigs - if they annoy me I switch em off.

[Commander McLane]

I have spent my first couple of years on these boards with a low-bandwidth connection, and have therefore learned to appreciate the lack of big recurring pics in signatures. I'm still not overly fond of them.

Nowadays the width of the page on mobile devices may be a more frequent problem. I guess that normally the text is broken down to the page width, just like when you resize your window on a computer screen. However, wide pictures (and sig pictures being among them) screw the text breaks as well. This should be taken into account when creating a banner for a signature. Rule of thumb: narrow is beautiful.

While we're at it, a general word on posting screen shots and other pictures may also be in order: while it's understandable that people want to show off their work in great detail, and the board has already a limitation of 1000x800 pixels, this is still much wider than my normal window size, which means that I have to scroll sideways in order to read the text above or below the picture. For most purposes a picture size of 640x480 pixels is absolutely sufficient, and fits into the normal page layout without causing trouble. Therefore I prefer pictures of that size. Imageshack, which I use for hosting screenshots, has the option to automatically resize pictures to 640x480 pixels on upload, so I don't even need to use Photoshop or something similar. And if you want to share a really big picture, you can still post a thumbnail with a link to the full picture.

[Smivs]

While we're at it, a general word on posting screen shots and other pictures may also be in order: while it's understandable that people want to show off their work in great detail, and the board has already a limitation of 1000x800 pixels, this is still much wider than my normal window size...if you want to share a really big picture, you can still post a thumbnail with a link to the full picture.

This is also good advice - a big image can wreck the layout of the whole page and I hate horizontal scroll bars!
For those who aren't sure how to use a clickable thumbnail, you will need to upload two versions of your image, a full size one and a thumbnail (which can still be quite big, say 500px wide). So if your main (full size) image is called MyBigImage.jpg scale it down (to say 200px wide or whatever size you want the image on the BB to be) and call it MyImageThumb.jpg. Upload both to your image host.
When composing your post use this code

Code: Select all

[url=http://www.YourImageHostingSite/MyBigImage.jpg][img]http://www.YourImageHostingSite/MyImageThumb.jpg][/img][/url]

This will place the thumbnail on the BB as a clickable link, and clicking on it will display the full size image. For an example see my friend Jack's post here.

[Cody]

Photobucket (and others probably) provide a thumbnail link (and a direct link) to any image stored, no matter its original size.

So... we're all agreed then? No sig images, no banners, no animations, no big images... can we ban excessive use of emoticons too? <chortles>

[Smivs]

... can we ban excessive use of emoticons too? <chortles>

[gizmo]

... can we ban excessive use of emoticons too? <chortles>

in that case we would've to ban excessive chuckling too

[Cody]

... can we ban excessive use of emoticons too? <chortles>

in that case we would've to ban excessive chuckling too

<smirks>

[Selezen]

Since I mostly read this forum at work, anything that reduces the glaring obviously not work related stuff would be appreciated. Banners I don't see as being a problem, but big flashy things in avatars and sigs can be a bit messy and distracting.

How about a maximum size restriction on banners and avatars, and disable gifs? I have no problem changing my sig from the banner to a smaller one or even removing it completely if that's the way we go.

[Smivs]

Since I mostly read this forum at work, anything that reduces the glaring obviously not work related stuff would be appreciated.

<chuckles but decides not to use an emoticon> <Smivs lied!>

How about a maximum size restriction on banners and avatars, and disable gifs? I have no problem changing my sig from the banner to a smaller one or even removing it completely if that's the way we go.

Avatars already have a maximum size of 128x128px. Banners currently don't which is why I suggested 200x100px, which is a wee bit bigger than EV's dragon, and seemed to me like a sensible compromise size.
I am against disabling things (or setting firm 'rules') because this is a free board and generally it polices itself, which is why I prefer guidelines which are agreed upon by all and adhered to by the majority. It does mean that if anybody wants to ignore them (perhaps for a legitimate reason) they can, but generally things are kept tidy and inoffensive.
The E:D banners are a case in point. I can quite understand why they are being used and have some sympathy with those wishing to express their link to the project. As they are all of a similar style, am I right in thinking there is a template or similar you are all using? Is there a slightly smaller one, or an alternative such as just the starbird logo thingy?
At the end of the day, members are free to use what they like, and I wouldn't want that freedom curbed any more than I want to see the board getting ever-more cluttered and garish.

[Thargoid]

I'll chip in a bit late here, but what the hell.

Anyway for me the biggest problem I have with the banners is that they interrupt the flow of the page reading downward. I read down a thread and find my eyes keep having to "jump hurdles" over all the graphics junk which basically don't contribute anything to the board. Yes I'm happy that people supported E:D, but frankly if I have to be reminded of it every time I look at a post that they've made then the goodwill will wear out very quickly.

Text sigs are generally fine, as they often contribute links and other useful information, or at the worst unless they're huge then the eye skips over them without jarring and you continue onto the next post easily. And that's not to mention those of us who use small laptop/netbook screens and/or tablets, where the screen space is at a premium anyway. This place currently isn't too bad, but all the E:D banners particularly are making it a lot worse (I know a few forums which are almost unreadable due to an excess of banners, especially animated ones).

As for avatars etc, as those are out of the general line of sight then for me they're less of an issue (plus they don't take up space that isn't needed by the minimum footprint of a post anyway). But yes extreme animations/colours will probably be eye-vortices there too and could need consideration.

There are forum hacks which can be added to allow sigs to be switched off on a per-user basis, but we don't currently have those installed here. And turning off all sigs is a bit extreme, as noted as well as losing the graphic baggage you lose the useful links too.

[Wolfwood]

I can understand that the banners are not very well liked - heck, I don't like them and only started using one when it seemed to be part of the thing to do.

So, whatever the decision is, I'll happily oblige.