Debian User Forums

Fluenza wrote:

Lavene wrote:If you use Firefox/ IceWasel with adblock you can add this rule to never see an avatar agin on these forums:

Code: Select all

http://forums.debian.net/images/avatars/*

Tina

This sort of works against the argument for limiting avatar size. If there are other options available for dealing with avatars -- options that do not include an infringement on expression -- then there is no justifiable reason for placing restrictions on avatar size and dimensions.

I just mentioned it in case someone was interested, kinda as a neat trick. I did not offer it as a solution to the current avatar disagreement. I'm sorry if it came across that way.

Tina

Actually that is not a good argument for not limiting avatars because that will only block avatars that are stored on the server and everyone here is arguing that large avatars not stored on the server should be allowed.

And I do not think that allowing large avatars that are stored on the server is a good thing because it wastes precious bandwidth that the server needs. This will become more and more of an issue the more people use the forums. Unless the person that owns the server (Jeroen) says otherwise. He knows best. In fact, he is the only one who can even make an argument for or against this.

AgenT wrote:...everyone here is arguing that large avatars not stored on the server should be allowed.

The first two words in the above quote pretty much says everything. Emphasis added by me.

i think the size limitation is sort of dumb
i think avatars are sort of dumb too
i think explaining the issue, suggesting something and asking for opinion is NOT dumb
i think clearly stating that a user does not have a opinion is NOT dumb
i think not stating doing either of the two above is dumb
i think people leaving because of not having input is NOT dumb

sometimes I think I am dumb.....other times I know I am

I decided to create and use an avatar on this site just to test the boundaries established by the site admins. I grabbed a JPEG image of George Peppard as John 'Hannibal' Smith and cropped the portion I wanted. (His head)

In GIMP, I scaled the image down to a width of 79 pixels. I brightened the image up a bit because it was looking kind of dark. I then saved it as a JPEG image at 85% quality. The resulting file is now displayed as my avatar. It is a whopping 1.7 Kilobytes in size. That's right! It's not even 1/5th the allowable file size! It looks fine -- at least, for an avatar.

And here's an excerpt from Wikipedia on Hannibal:

Wikipedia wrote:By whichever route, his passage over the Alps is one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare. Hannibal successfully crossed the mountains, despite numerous obstacles such as harsh climate and terrain, the guerrilla tactics of the native tribes, and the challenge of commanding an army diverse in race and language. He descended from the foothills and arrived into northern Italy in the vicinity of modern Turin, but accompanied by only half the forces he had started with, and only a few elephants. From the start he seems to have calculated that he would have to operate without aid from Hispania. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy, however, points out that the figures for the number of troops he had when he left Hispania are less than reliable.

Wikipedia -- Read more here!

<----- < 6Kb

I like avatars because it makes it easier to identify posters. It's kinda easier to remember an image than a nickname, especially nicknames that's not real names/ words. However, I'd like as much as possible of my screen real estate to show the actual information. I'm using a 15" LCD laptop display and have my bookmarks in the sidebar.

And an 80x80 image is just as easily recognized as an 300 x 600 highrez image. It simply makes sense to have small avatars.

I know I can adblock the images etc but that kinda defeat the entire purpose of avatars. An avatar is not the place to show off your artistic skills, it's a means of provide others with something visually recognizable.

My 0.002€

Tina

'

Basically, you can't easily verify the size of remotely linked avatars (you can, but it's pointless overhead on the server-side script), and a few morons were using huge (1mb+) animated avatars.

So, now we all suffer with rather strict dimensions/filesize limitations.

Oh, and the forum lost one of its smartest/most active members.

Grifter wrote:But you're quite right, this is your personal forum, and you get to dictate rules, so I'll take my shit and pack up.

It's a shame we lost a very active and knowledgeable forum participant.

Though Grifter's avatar was rather large, I overlooked it and concentrated on his posts. It's why I come here, to learn from the experience of others. I don't use this forum as a support mechanism, Google is sufficient for finding answers to my problems.

Wish we could of worked something out.

'

Grifter is within his right, as a valued contributing member, to voice his objection to a change in policy.

That is true, except I believe nobody has a right to use the language he used, we have a lot of young people using this board. He may choose to use that language, but he shouldn't use it here.

As for leaving the board, he might have been knowledgeable about debian, but I'm sure there are others still here that know what he knows, so if a school yard bully goes home that makes the play ground a better place to be.

As for avatars, I for one don't see the problem, I had no issues making a avatar that was acceptable. If somebody wants to exeibite his art work, he should set up his own web site.

Like lavene says avatars serve the purpose of quickly identifing the poster, and quickly recognizing the poster. Animated avatars are quit distracting, (even if lavene has one) But if the are quickly loaded with the page they aren't a problem.

Personally, I don't like large avatars, though I do like simple animated avatars like Optional's. Like Lavene, I identify a user by their avatar, not by their username. My favorite avatar is this one (15kb):
[img]http://board.theprogrammingsite.com/images/avatars/84282259043c558fa6fbae.gif[/url]

So, my suggestion would to be to raise the stored avatar size up to 20KB (a reasonable size), and allow animated .gif files.

I do agree with Jeroen, though. I use a 28.8K modem connection at home, (with download speeds of 2.2KBPs and ping times above 1500ms), so I don't like large avatars, though 20KB is fine, since I often play a card game while I'm waiting for my webpage to load.

That's my 25 cents.