Well no, technically I can do it, it's just that I'm not going to go around editing people's avatars without a good reason (a 2 MB gif from Love Hina is a good reason, for instance). What, PNGs don't work for you? I think they've been allowed for like more than a year now, though maybe that's just for moderators?

Pang, we've been able to upload PNGs as avatars for years.


Oh that's pretty awesome, Blah. How will the ignore feature work? Will it just be an ignore forever or an ignore until they change their avatar? I could see an ignore until they change their avatar being good. For example let's say I do a slightly seizuresque avatar and someone just wants to turn it off because it's kind of hurting their eyes a little. I wouldn't want them to forget that they put my avatar space on ignore and never see my new avatars forever. That would suck. :(

However, if people remote link to a php and their avatar changes all the time would it bump you off their ignore list or until you change what the remote link is pointing to? I'd say it would be best to bump a person off the ignore avatar list when they change the remote link or upload a new avatar.

So ignore user's avatar until new avatar change and ignore user's avatar until manually taken off the ignore list. Those are the two types of ignore avatars I'd do.

I'm sure you could name or describe them much better.


Oh and consider me a donator the minute you implement this. Money will be coming.

Can we just choose to ignore all .gif avatars?

Also, since the 105x150 .bmp avatar I made was approximately 50kb when I saved it, can we set that as the maximum avatar size?

There's the avatar revision info that's updated whenever a user changes avatar, so we could make use of that.

By the way, all uploaded avatars are converted into .gif files, regardless of the original filetype.

;___;

Better a gif avatar than a jpg avatar I'd imagine.

Jpg's would probably take more strain to load and if a gif avatar is saved correctly, the file size would not be an issue.

The only problem you'd encounter would be animated gifs which (if in good taste) would not be as bad I assume.

That sounds good. And that would work for remote hosted avatars too or changes to where that links to?

Also, woah. I never noticed that all our avatars were converted to gifs. I figured we'd lose some quality over that. I guess that's not the case. How does that work?

Acer, the point is that only a very few people would do anything with the extra space worth doing with it. The rest would just be people who become lazy and don't compress their images when they can or would make terrible and gigantic avatars.

The negatives far outweigh the positives. As a mod, I feel that it is my job to look out for everyone on GFF, not a couple of creative people. I know you and Brent can't see that because you're both thinking about all the great things you can do, but what about some fuckhead who doesn't know what the hell he's doing? The MySpace comparison is valid here because the forum should be about the text to the right of the postbit, not about who can design the most shit for their avatar and sig spaces.

1) Thus unfounded need for an increase in size. 2) Increased loading time. 3) While people can make bad shit now, people could make even worse shit. 4) Further distraction from the important parts of GFF, the shitifying of GFF, as it is. 5) To get around some of these for people who do hate all this, more coding for Blah to do and more annoying options for people who just want GFF to look like just an Internet forum, which is what our focus should be anyway.

That you and Diss and a couple others can't make fancy dancing avatars doesn't outweigh other factors. I'm sorry, but I will never feel different about the selfishness of this. You're welcome to call a vote in the Hut anytime you want, there's nothing more I can say on the matter. (Edit: Oops, looks like Blah took executive decision on this.)

(Also, calling everyone lame who doesn't like animated GIFs, nice touch. You might as well go all the way like Diss last night and tell me that because of an Internet argument I should drop out of law school before I even start.)

oh right

Additional Spam:
That's fucking pathetic. Absolutely and completely pathetic.

"GFF isn't good enough to donate to OH WAIT YOU ARE GOING TO LET ME MAKE MOVING PICTURES OMG WHERE DO I SEND MONEY TO"

Uhhh now, why is that pathetic? Basically, Miles already has enough money to run GFF for like a year, I don't see any immediate pressing need to donate right now. Though, if it lands me a bonus feature that I want, that's a good enough incentive to pay some money. This is capitalism, Mikey!

Yay, capitalism!

It's pathetic because he didn't consider GFF good enough to begin with. GFF wasn't good enough until he could make a big avatar? Well, fuck him.

Basically all that needs to be said is that Blah is going to make it so you can ignore specific users avatars. If you don't want to see one, you won't have to. There is nothing left to complain about.

If it were really about the content of someone's posts alone then why have avatars at all? Why have chains and theme weeks and anything else? I don't know, maybe because people enjoy them and it adds to their experience here, perhaps. Just like being able to be more creative with their avatar space does.

In addition, I maintain that you can already make pretty much the most annoying avatar possible within the current 30kb limit so that's not a reason to not increase the cap.

As far as our discussion last night goes, I didn't tell you you should drop out of law school. I said that for someone who's going to law school you were making some pretty dumb arguments. Forgive me if I held you to a higher standard since you're going to be arguing for a career someday. I suppose I shouldn't have let my expectations get the better of me like that.

Dude do you even have any idea how ridiculous you look right now? Take some deep breaths.

Yeah, I'm thinking, "Hey, I'm going to put as much energy into talking to Diss as I will Professor Smith."

RR WHY AREN'T YOU POSTING THE MOLECULE FOR DIHYDROTHEXOLINE HOW CAN YOU BE A SCIENTIST YOU JUST POSTED WORTHLESS SMILIES

Would the GFF you're talking about (you know, the one with an emphasis on intelligent discussion and whatnot) exist if everyone adopted that lazy attitude and decided they couldn't be bothered to put in a bit of effort and create a more cohesive argument because lol internet?

I'm going to have to agree with Mikey on the text being important. This is a forum, and its primary purpose is to facilitate communication and discussion. This is best accomplished using the area to the right of the postbit. It's the most important part, and I would argue that it is really what counts.

Avatars and sigs are helpful features that give each poster a unique identity. But they remain a feature. I'm sorry, but chains and theme weeks are not the primary purpose. I contend that if you feel the need to be creative, there are other more specialized outlets for that. Youtube for the aspiring film director, DeviantArt for the budding artist, Photobucket for the serious photographer, and of course if you feel the need to put seizure inducing primary colors, YTMND and Myspace works pretty well!

Would the GFF I'm talking about exist if people didn't approach it like they would law school?!

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/863/strawev4.jpg

(Also, I want the main focus to be on the discussion. Obviously, with things like Testing and the Sewers, it isn't necessarily always intelligent.)

Miles has stated that he has plenty of money for the server. For several months even. I've decided to hold out on donating until he needs it and throw him a nice bone when that time comes. I've never said GFF isn't good enough to donate for. Hell, I've donated before when it was bobo asking for money. If you think I'd donate to bobo but not donate to Miles then I'm sorry I somehow gave you that impression, but hey if donating is going to get me something nice that I want then I'll do it earlier. Goodness.


Okay, now that that's cleared up I'm not going to go on a rampant quoting spree b/c you hadn't read Blah's decision when you were typing plus bleh.

I don't get why you think that you can't have both a focus on the text and nice personal graphical extras. With you it's increase the avatar/sig size and suddenly GFF is MySpace and everyone is talking like morons and the textual side that make a forum, well, a forum is gone, but if we don't then everything is honkydory.

I'm uncertain of how avatars and sigs of any size effect the interface in which you communicate on an Internet forum. I'm in this neat little thing right now where I reply to threads typing away and later on you will read and see what I am currently typing. It's no different from Word or notepad except some ways of formatting is different and there are some extra things like emoticons and what not. But yeah this is all me typing and communicating to you the reader in my own thoughts and words. Eventually I will click Submit Reply and it will appear in the thread for all to read. *click*

Oh my! What's that? My friends avatar and sig have joined in on my post's text to keep it company. They sure are swell. :) Oh no! :o They're 75kb or greater in size and giving this post cancer. Oh god no. Don't die little post. Don't leave me. http://www.acerbandit.net/emoticons/crying.gif Daddy will make avatar and sig go on a diet and de-AIDS them so you don't get sick no more. Just promise me you won't lose focus and spread your affliction to others. Oh no don't leave me! :gonk: ... Damn you avatar and sig! :argh: If you weren't so big and distracting then little post's quality (of life) wouldn't have been smushed out of existence. :(

Oh god the posts above and below are starting to fade as well. This is a catastrophe! Everyone can you hear me?! We have to all change to lite set and turn off all images, avatars, and sigs and then maybe we can save the forum. Oh and clap and chant "I believe in post content! I believe in post content! I believe in post content!!" Maybe we can still save it.

I only wanted to write a good post and it's come to this because I went to far and had a quality avatar and sig. Well I've learned from my mistake. I won't ever be making avatars and sigs again. I just hope we can survive this storm. Oh god I spoke too soon! Hold on everybody! We got to make it to the top of that wave of disco seizure biggest miu!!! Here we go!!!!!! *forum capsizes and everyone drowns*

Way to miss the point, but that's OK, because mocking gets you lol on the Internet and means you win the argument!!

You can!

I don't see that as GFF's focus.

You especially always have been more concerned with the look of GFF and being as absolutely noisy as possible (see: times when you've made the most annoying av/sig sets we'd seen to that point, ban raids, etc.) than about the quality of the posts here on GFF (and most of your recent crusades involve even crappier forums and worse posts). People don't stay here because "omg that Brent had such a good avatar" they stay because of the content.

As I said, I don't believe more space for these mostly pointless things enhances the overall quality of the forum. Maybe a couple of posters' postbits, but, for the most part, I predict that it would decrease quality. I get that you don't care about that, because not enabling that to others keeps you from being as noisy as you want to be.

You should close the thread!

and acer and me can close evade looooooooool

Oh stop it, Mikey. You're making me blush. http://a.photos.cx/blushing-23e.gif

Gonna post and just say that while acer and some other people will probably do some pretty spiffy stuff with new enhancements, SSJClouderiothXxX is probably going to enjoy having an even more lame anigif avatar than before.

And diss, it's not about setting out to make the most annoying avatar possible (as devo and such are doing), but inadvertently making a butt-ugly avatar that hurts everyone's eyes as soon as they see it.

I honestly don't see the issue with Blah's solution. Cash for features, with an option to disable for crybabies, senior citizens and AOLers. What CloudirothBallZ would do with it is not an issue because that guy does not have any money except his allowance.

Also Mikey it's kind of bullshit to call out Acer for not giving away free money when you yourself haven't donated either so far as I can tell. "MAYBE I NEVER HELP NO MATTER WHAT, BUT YOU ONLY HELP IF MOTIVATED TO! YOU'RE SO SELFISH!"

Let's not pretend GFF is hardline against obnoxious large images because Merv would have been VAPORIZED. The whole idea that visual pleasantry is THE MORTAL ENEMY of content is utter bullshit. I suppose whenever you're talking to someone, you get up and walk out if you notice they're dressed nicely. "YOU SPENT TIME ON YOUR APPEARANCE! YOU CLEARLY HAVE NOTHING VALID TO SAY." Presentation AIDS communication, it doesn't detract from it.

Yeah but as has been pointed out you may UPLOAD a png but you get a gif on the other side which, uh, counterproductive. So that's the other upside of remotes: not having a script recompress your files (which would presumably still occur even if the limit were quintupled or some such).

All avatars aren't converted to .gifs, per se. The file name is just adjusted to end in .gif no matter what type of image it actually is. PNGs, JPEGs, etc. will all display normally without any downgrading. (I just tried it right now.)

So it just changes the name?

For no REASON?

Pfft sputter abrupt shift from irritated to confused