Can we please have animated avatars?

[azzaman333]

You can hit escape and it stops animations. But, animated avatars are annoying and don't really add anything to the forum.

And the forum software is (as far as I can tell) unable to discriminate between animated avatars or otherwise we wouldn't need the mods to police the issue at all.

 

[carmen510]

Animated ones are distracting. put them as the profile pictures, where noone can see them.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I completely disagree with this, as I think that if someone isn't capable of expressing themselves using words, they probably don't have anything useful to express at all. But I think I'm alone in this view. At any rate, the loathsome rolling eyes smilie is high on my personal list of things that should be banned, because it is always used solely to aggravate - in fact I don't think I've ever seen it used in a way that wasn't at least borderline trolling.

I would certainly contest the bolded statement above (my bolding though), but not here. I am a "word person" who spends much of my RL writing complex things so that they can be understood easily, and I certainly appreciate your stance on smilies Plotinus. I do wish that more CFC members were better at expressing themselves with words, but I think that for most, it will come with time. CFCers are generally young and have been raised with cell phones, chat & texting as their primary communication tools. Language subtlies are often missed.

I mainly use smilies to avoid miscommunications. Posters here are quick to draw the conclusion that another poster is angry or attacking them personally and use of and its brothers in code, is a way to make sure that others will not misinterpret a post.

In addition, there are times when a thread gets very conversational and the appropriate RL responsse would be a wink or a nod or a gesture that continues the conversation or acknowledges a particularly well-turned phrase. Smilies try, but ultimately fail, to fill this role.

Because you write for a living and are so skilled with words, your standards are far higher than the rest of us, but without the kinds of posts you make, many here would not know that quality writing is possible on an internet forum.

Spoiler :

I could not resist inserting the smilie into your post.