Clickable smilies Options

[Peter Evans]

Mankind (or if you prefer humankind) managed to communicate without smilies for centuries. Millennia, even. Now, perhaps a lot of people think they're cute, perhaps a lot more people think that they need to have them because the precise nuances of their comments might otherwise be misunderstood, and gawsh, people are so sensitive, y'know?

I found smilies interesting for a period of about five minutes perhaps five years ago. But now, I'm sick of them. Just about every bloody forum I go to has them. (Lean, mean old htmlhelp.com/bbs/ is a refreshing exception.)

It's just byte-wasting crapola, really. No smilies, please.

[Peter Evans]

Yes, smilies suck.

Consider this thread. I am here going to have to refer to lowercase letters of the alphabet as "ay" and "bee" (even though I actually wrote "a" and "b"). I wrote:

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (ay) messages such as mine and (bee) flamebait, etc.

Preview showed me

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (ay) messages such as mine and ([some stupid smiley]) flamebait, etc.

I noted that "emoticons" were enabled (funny, I thought I'd disabled the **beep** [thank you, nannyware] things in my profile). I disabled them, and re-previewed

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (ay) messages such as mine and (bee) flamebait, etc.

Now I read:

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (a) messages such as mine and ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) flamebait, etc.

Ugh.

Can't smilies be completely disabled? I don't want autoconversion into smilies. I don't want smilies. I don't want autoconversion out of smilies to ugly text. All I want is intelligent text on web-related issues, not *beep* equivalents of winks and nudges and the mess they cause.

[Liam Quinn]

Yes, smilies suck.

Consider this thread. I am here going to have to refer to lowercase letters of the alphabet as "ay" and "bee" (even though I actually wrote "a" and "b"). I wrote:

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (ay) messages such as mine and (bee) flamebait, etc.

Preview showed me

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (ay) messages such as mine and ([some stupid smiley]) flamebait, etc.

I noted that "emoticons" were enabled (funny, I thought I'd disabled the **beep** [thank you, nannyware] things in my profile). I disabled them, and re-previewed

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (ay) messages such as mine and (bee) flamebait, etc.

Now I read:

I wonder whether it might be necessary to distinguish between (a) messages such as mine and ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) flamebait, etc.

When composing a message, there is a Post Options section with an "Enable emoticons?" checkbox. If you uncheck that, then you should be able to type stuff like (b) with no worries.

[Christian J]

When composing a message, there is a Post Options section with an "Enable emoticons?" checkbox. If you uncheck that, then you should be able to type stuff like ( with no worries.

True, but the setting is not saved so one must check it every time.

[John Pozadzides]

When composing a message, there is a Post Options section with an "Enable emoticons?" checkbox. If you uncheck that, then you should be able to type stuff like (B) with no worries.

True, but the setting is not saved so one must check it every time.

Ok. The main problem before was that B) was triggering a smilie. That has now been changed (as you can see)...

Here are the smilie settings. If anyone has good reason to change one of the current settings please let me know.


Peter - I understand your loathing for smilies and am sorry that you are having difficulty disabling them. I'm looking into fixing that for you (and anyone else that disables them). However, I think that the general concensus regarding them is either positive or neutral at worst, so for that reason I'm not going to disable them across the board.

Hopefully you won't mind that so much once we get the bug fixed that shows the image link instead of nothing at all?

Thanks,

John

[Guest_Brian Chandler_*]

Peter - I understand your loathing for smilies and am sorry that you are having difficulty disabling them. I'm looking into fixing that for you (and anyone else that disables them). However, I think that the general concensus regarding them is either positive or neutral at worst, so for that reason I'm not going to disable them across the board.

Do you have any actual evidence of this "neutral/positive" opinion? I hate all this crap that encrusts "modern" computing. Why do we have to have crap? Does _anyone_ actually like it?

There is quite a lot more rubbish clogging up this interface - if I ask a question, how does it matter whether I ask it in Times Roman or Trebuchet? Get rid of the "font" nonsense. Then how nice it would be to get rid of all the dismal blobs: I have invested half a century practicing reading, so if something says "Insert link", I immediately know what it means - I'm tired of having to mouse around stupid blobs waiting for a popup hint.

Here's another suggestion: [] |> o#o <<(= @@

(See how much easier that is than English?)

[Christian J]

Do you have any actual evidence of this "neutral/positive" opinion? I hate all this crap that encrusts "modern" computing. Why do we have to have crap? Does _anyone_ actually like it?

I don't. And even though it's tempting to use some of it if it's available, I find it quite tedious to check the BBCode syntax before posting (in addition to double-checking any real code examples you want to post).

[jimlongo]

Do you have any actual evidence of this "neutral/positive" opinion? I hate all this crap that encrusts "modern" computing. Why do we have to have crap? Does _anyone_ actually like it?

Regardless of the "anti-modern" stance you avocate, I'd say it's a safe bet that many people do like it.
I don't have scientific evidence, but just look at the questions on these forums as opposed to the answers, look at YouTube or MySpace or whatever comes next.

You might as well rail against rock'n'roll or rap. ;-\

Regards,
jim

[Brian Chandler]

Do you have any actual evidence of this "neutral/positive" opinion? I hate all this crap that encrusts "modern" computing. Why do we have to have crap? Does _anyone_ actually like it?

Regardless of the "anti-modern" stance you avocate, I'd say it's a safe bet that many people do like it.
I don't have scientific evidence, but just look at the questions on these forums as opposed to the answers, look at YouTube or MySpace or whatever comes next.

You might as well rail against rock'n'roll or rap. ;-\

Regards,
jim

Well, OK, but who is this board for, and what stance does it take? A huge proportion of the questions are along the lines of "How do I inflict [insert particular sort of stupidity] on my visitors?" Since the answer always includes someone (not me in most cases), trying explain why [stupidity] is a bad idea, should we nonetheless implement the stupidity on this board just because questioners seem to like it?

Do you like having smilies? Do you think they make it easier for the people who post answers here to help questioners? Or do they (on balance) probably help questioners make their questions even harder to understand, so as to waste more of the answerers time?

Can we have actual answers from people saying "I like smilies" or "I don't like smilies", rather than lots of supposition about what "most people" might or might not like?

[Christian J]

A huge proportion of the questions are along the lines of "How do I inflict [insert particular sort of stupidity] on my visitors?" Since the answer always includes someone (not me in most cases), trying explain why [stupidity] is a bad idea

Correct. But what will happen if these people are made to feel unwelcome? Most likely they'll go somewhere else next time, and will have learned nothing. If we instead take the time to help them with their stupid web tricks (while gently pointing out the error of their ways) they might come back more times, and will gradually learn better habits.

should we nonetheless implement the stupidity on this board just because questioners seem to like it?

I guess the WDG has always aimed to reach a wide audience. So yes, if the intention is to attract larger numbers of people than previously one must probably adapt to their wishes.

Of course, if the forum becomes too obnoxius to the regulars there will be nobody left to help the newbies.

This post has been edited by Christian J: Sep 3 2006, 01:23 PM