Avatars

I'm generally against avatars - I'd rather judge someone by his or her words and not by appearance or taste in tacky 100 pixel graphics. But I would settle for Dierk's view - a straight portrait seems in tune with the real names principle, and I'd extend the rule to signatures too. To take two examples of where avatars and signatures are misused - at another good forum there's a user whose avatar is a cannabis leaf. I'm pretty liberal here - it's as filthy a habit as tobacco smoking - but I'm sure there'll be others who are irked by that. Hey, why not a coca leaf or a syringe? At that same forum there's another character whose signature includes not just his own web site but also a link to the US Army recruitment's site. Fine, what about a Hizbollah or Israeli flag then? Your own name, your own picture, your own web site - nowt else.

John

For some reason, this thread is reminding me of being back in school, many, many years ago..... so maybe its not such a bad thing.

For goodness sake, turn on the smilies, allow the avatars, see what happens. If it goes permanently pear shaped, then remove it, else moderate it a bit directing it to whatever its final destination will be. If you want to post pictures of yourself, the neighbour's wife, your pet dog as a visual tag to your posts, what is the problem?

The problem's simple - avatars like pseudonyms are a fast track to RobGalbraith MkII. Moderators shouldn't have to do anything here, let alone judge if an avatar has crossed what will always be a grey line - unless you say a picture of yourself. These forums have a clean look - let's keep out the visual trash.

Asher, does the forum software allow users to switch off the display of avatars? If so, that might be an easy way to satisfy everyone.

John

John,

Perhaps I agree about keeping out the visual trash, but one man's visual trash, is another man's art. I am saying, if you only allow photos of faces, it will be difficult to recognise the poster from the avatar alone. It therefore is useless as an avatar. I am saying, that most folk are pretty sober here, (although I must add that Asher has been branching out into coloured html text recently, and has been threatenibng to get me whipped and put in bed with 70 virgins - I thought the ref. to 'rabied pit bulls' was a typo - what a way to go....), so it is unlikely that we'd get much trash.

I am asking, what is the reason for an avatar? If it is because you are such a great looking guy that you need to show your photo on every post, or is it to allow easy recognition of the calibre of your post. Although a slightly different situation, on my pc window's desktop, every app. hasn't got a picture of Bill Gates, it has a 'fairly easily identifiable'? icon. Only when some of them look similar do I need to read the program name. Your guy on t'other forum with the inappropiate avatar, in your/our opinion, if you read his threads, then you could quickly decide whether to avoid reading them in future, since his avatar is so easily identified.

Anyway, how does it sit with the 5th amendment or whatever the guys in the USA quote when a perceived freedom seems threatened - even if its a freedom they never really had in the first place.

Best wishes,

Ray

Sure, Ray, we'd all differ on what's trash and what's art or self-expression. I just feel the forum would simply be better off without avatars. Animated gifs? National flags? Flags of aspiring states (eg Basque, Tibetan, Palestinian etc). Avatars with religious symbols? I feel it's inevitable we'd soon be faced with such marginal cases that would just irritate people whatever was decided. And it would be almost impossible to draw a line - as you say, portraits might be obscure. We can recognize people by their name

Isn't the 5th about not incriminating yourself?

John

Ray, my experience is quite contrary. You may not make out detailed features but you can quite easily discern people's faces in the typical avatar size. shouldn't the members of this forum be good enough to come up with suitable portraits?

There may not be too many wearers of hats around so my current forum photo (used at photo-i and Opera) works very well. And Vincent Oliver's portrait [he's the only other one using the avatar feature over at photo-i] is very different from mine. Opera's blogs, forums and what-nots are even more impressive; at least in the Desktop Team blog - a preview forum - several people use real (Webcam) images. Unfortunately most others are of the 12-year-old variant.

VB has full support

John Beardsworth said:

The problem's simple - avatars like pseudonyms are a fast track to RobGalbraith MkII. Moderators shouldn't have to do anything here, let alone judge if an avatar has crossed what will always be a grey line - unless you say a picture of yourself. These forums have a clean look - let's keep out the visual trash.

Asher, does the forum software allow users to switch off the display of avatars? If so, that might be an easy way to satisfy everyone.

John

Click to expand...

It's only needed to be turned on. Those who don't like them can switch them off in their CP.
It's the best of both worlds..

HTH

This thread is reminiscent of a Groucho Marx quote:

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five."

Asher Kelman said:

Now, on the edit time, how much do you need?

Asher

Click to expand...

Like it -used- to be is fine, something like 15 minutes with no notation, a day or so with "edited..." notation. Now it seems to be 15 minutes and that's it.

- DL

Don,

As threads progress during the day, the "Team" doesn't step in and start hacking at the meaning by selectively changing or removing things to their particular taste.

Similarly, after a reasonable time, a post becomes part of the integral fibre of the thread. So its author cannot after what supports posts down the lin!

So suggest a reasonable compromise time period, after which the post is fixed.

We have had incidents in which I had to repair threads, by very limited undeleting, where one poster removed a bunch of posts, essentially shredding the threads meaning and wasting the effort of all the other posters.

What's the point of doing a search to find incomprehensible threads?

We want to maintain the highest quality of conversation.

When a bunch of guys exchange ideas, someone might poorly frame an idea or put forward something that calls for an explanation or challenge. Feedback leads to pretty immediate clarification. There changes are made while everyone knows the original argument.

The same has to applies here.

Asher

Hi, Asher,

I have a negative view of placing time limits on peoples' ability to edit their posts.

Disabling editing of old posts because "We have had incidents in which I had to repair threads, by very limited undeleting, where one poster removed a bunch of posts, essentially shredding the threads meaning and wasting the effort of all the other posters" is like treating members as guilty until proven innocent. I think it is preferable not to suspect people of proneness to abusing this worthwhile feature unless and until they have revealed themselves as unworthy of your trust. While suspecting folks pre-emptively and turning off the ability to edit posts after a certain time period, we lose a tool which is often valuable to prevent a situation which is both rare and correctable; and we impede the sense of openness and civility that distinguishes OPF.

Take the events that happened to me, today, as an example of one of the many legitimate uses of being able to edit posts long after their creation: Most of the pictures I have shown on this site have been hosted on photo.net. Yesterday, photo.net made clear that there has been a change of Editor-In-Chief/administrator... to a person whom I cannot trust as a steward of my copyrighted material. Consequently, today, I removed all of my pictures from photo.net. This means that almost all of my pictures displayed on various threads on this site are now broken links. If I had the option to edit my old posts, I would fix the links, replacing the broken links with working links to the same pictures, hosted on a different server. But as it is, without the ability to edit, the pictures which were displayed here will have to remain broken links.

This is just one example of the fact that disabling the ability to edit old posts shreds more threads than it saves, and just one example that there are lots of legitimate reasons that someone might go back and edit an old post.

I have seen the ability to edit old posts work too well on too many forums to think that abuse of this feature presents a serious problem. If there has been a record of abuse of this feature by an individual, then disable that person's editing abilities, not everybody's.

Mike

www.mikespinak.com

Mike,

You have presented a sound argument. I would like to continue that and explore possible solutions with you because we now have 2 important considerations, real issues of keeping the integrity of threads from being damaged by actual cuts or by inability to redirect pointers to other content elsewhere.

For now, here's the simple solution Mike. As soon as this is posted, let me set things up for you to edit as you need to do.

But just a PM from anyone explaining in 5 words, would do that too.

Let's think about this matter and in the meanwhile, I'll respond to any needs to edit.

DPreview, (no source of great legal opnions, but at least recognizing the issues), doesn't allow editing after a very short while.

It never even crossed my mind that someone would just remove material already posted. Even when we don't like the content of someones post, we treasure it and protect it as free speech. No one has crossed the line to require deletions, and even if that occurred, it would never be a reason for changing the open policy of OPF.

With late editing by the poster, the matter is more problematic, because once the concrete has set, it is the foundation for everything that follows.

Maybe someone else will find exceptions as or even more compelling than the broken image link example, still that can be dealt with on a case by case basis. Please PM me with new ideas.

I'm sure you appreciate that this is a complex and arguable issue. However, at this time, editing needs to be limited to some fair time. I'm going to increase it to 1 hour. This should give an opportunty to refine the post.

As we develop more programming capability, we'll try to incorporate more flexible policies.

Asher

Hi All,

I have been following this discussion from the beginning. After reading Mike's recent post, I've decided that I'd also voice my personal opinion (FWIW) since I agree with Mike fully (re. the editing ability).

1) As far as editing ability is concerned, I think it should be allowed just as Mike has explained very well why. I am a member of another very civilised forum (the photo-i forum which is referred to by Dierk earlier in this thread) where editing is allowed and it has never been the cause of any problems. I am also a member of a couple of high volume forums (IT related) where editing is allowed and it actually helps prevent escalation of some unwanted discussions due to miscommunication of ideas/feelings. Simple re-wording of a sentence can sometimes create wonders . BTW, if such editing is done, the editor should explain the situation to the unsuspecting reader by pointing out that the post has been edited to re-word certain expressions and/or to correct wrong links to photos, etc.

I (hope that I) understand where Asher is coming from. Integrity of a thread is only guaranteed if nothing can be edited. Besides, if people are aware of the fact that the posts can not be edited, they may be more careful in putting their thoughts on "paper" to start with. OTOH, considerate people who would do that, would do the same even when editing is allowed .

2) As far as avatars are concerned, I am fine either way. I will not be using one even if I am allowed to but I respect people who use them. I tend to read a post in order to understand and judge it; I just don't skip some posts based on a graphical representation of the author.

Regards,

Cem

About the editing capability: It all depends on the authors seriousness and honesty. As long as nobody has answered to his post he can change anything, after a reply he should only change typos. Personally I even let typos in if somebody cited me with the typo in the quotation. As for additions, changes of contents etc. it is always a good idea to put in a note on what has been edited in the post.

Most of the time I only change typos, very rarely misquotations, the odd fact correction. Sometimes I add a postscript to a message, which is indicated by me through a pseudo-tag [Edit:].

1 hour seems reasonable, but it would be a mistake to extend editing time much beyond that and would inevitably undermine the integrity of threads. If you've posted something, you've got to expect it'll be in the public domain for good (and certainly not be hived off into a subscription-based forum, Mr Galbraith) - post again if you've misrepresented yourself and need to correct your phrasing, spelling or grammar.

John

(edited to insert a comma after something)

Thanks guys,

My pledge is that no material will sold off! The solution to most issues is iterative. So we need all the equential parts to follow the progress arguments in context.

Asher

Dierk Haasis said:

Personally I even let typos remain if somebody cited me with the typo in the quotation. As for additions, changes of contents etc. it is always a good idea to put in a note on what has been edited in the post.

Click to expand...

Myself, I tend to fix typos I note in quoted material. ;o) And sometimes I just left them slide in my own writing if they are not fundamental to the gist of what is being said.

I think editing has value for correcting typos and poor grammatical constructs. But I do not like the idea of an edit changing the content of a post in a material fashion. I think the best answer to this is what you would find on wikipedia where if you look at an articles history you will find that you can access all past versions. That said, the best answer is not always practical (I am not sure how many contributors here are comfortable working with SQL).

some thoughts,

Sean

Mike Spinak said:

I have a negative view of placing time limits on peoples' ability to edit their posts.

Click to expand...

Me too, afterall the poster created the content and supposedly owns the content. If responders have appropriately quoted what they're responding to, nothing will be lost.

Both DOBP and LL impose no time limit on editing and I've rarely seen it abused. One case on LL comes to mind where a poster went on a rampage against the RG transition then later deleted all his posts, but nothing really was lost as it was a rampage. I also recall a case on RG (which iirc limited edits to 6 hours or so) where someone (Melvin S. ) said something really stupid then edited it out - again no real loss except as a testament to the effects of late night booze.

- DL

Editability

I'd ask to prolong editing period if not indefinitely then at least for 24 hours.

Being not an English speaking native and all, I often start a post with grammatically and syntactically poor sentences. Especially after midnight, like now (OMG, it's almost 2 am

Then on the next day I - hopefully - see the mistakes, and go fix them. Usually around lunch. One hour, or even six hours editing policy do not cover this behavioristic pattern of mine.. :-(

And with the people changing the original content or deleting their posts... You know what they say: "Fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me". This phenomenon becomes public in no time, and people simply stop dealing with such "editors". I'm not talking about the clinical case, naturally.
An example of a rather large forum, dgrin (where a person can edit his/her own notes indefinitely) shows that it does not happen. Nutcases are weeded by the mods, and the rest treasure the sense of community enough to not engage in a such a silly thing as "perpetual editing".

Just my 0.00002 of the f/stop...