Seriously... About the Forum Avatars - Page 2

Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post just about everything that isn't directly related to Spring here!

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Silentwings
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Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Silentwings »

And titles.
Not meaning offence to anyone, but those titles/colours (which are both actually forum groups) are afaik the only way the forum try to differentiate between developers and non-developers. Of course it does so quite unreliably, since not everyone productive bothers with a forum group or wants to be part of a declared project, but it is useful info and better than nothing.
gajop
Moderator
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Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by gajop »

luckywaldo7 wrote:Also we could probably remove "Join date" information. And titles.
Hmm, both of those seem quite useful for new users determine seniority/authority and relevancy.
Example: If a user comes and asks a question about a game, and he gets a response from that game's developer, it's certainly going to carry more weight than getting it from a random person.
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knorke
Posts: 7971
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 01:02

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by knorke »

luckywaldo7 wrote:Also we could probably remove "Join date" information. And titles.
I agree. Hiding behind title might impress newbies but otherwise is just silly.
The content of post should speak for itself and not need to gain weight by title or join date.
forum rules wrote:2. Your E-Resume does not make you right, neither does being part of the majority. [...] If a topic is worth arguing about then it's worth having solid evidence to support your opinion.
gajop
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Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by gajop »

knorke wrote:
luckywaldo7 wrote:Also we could probably remove "Join date" information. And titles.
I agree. Hiding behind title might impress newbies but otherwise is just silly.
The content of post should speak for itself and not need to gain weight by title or join date.
forum rules wrote:2. Your E-Resume does not make you right, neither does being part of the majority. [...] If a topic is worth arguing about then it's worth having solid evidence to support your opinion.
You are twisting things. No one is saying that having titles makes one "correct" or anything, but it DOES show authority which is something new users can rely on.
In general it's perfectly sensible to have these views _IF_ you don't know better (and most noobs don't):
1. Engine devs can be considered an authority to all-things engine-related
2. Game/content devs can be considered an authority to all-things related to their game/content.
3. Old (and especially post-heavy) users are likely to have detailed knowledge regarding most things.
4. Mod/admin titles implies that this person has to be listened to in terms of enforcing forum rules/behavior.

The same kind of thing applies to most other sites: from wine making to hardware. Being able to easily discern the credibility of the person given by the community of that site is of great importance. There's a reason people look very closely to the posts of so-called "blues" (company official posts) on most other gaming sites. It's really not that important what users unrelated to the project being discussed have to say.
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Evangelion
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Joined: 11 Dec 2013, 13:55

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Evangelion »

gajop wrote:You are twisting things. No one is saying that having titles makes one "correct" or anything, but it DOES show authority which is something new users can rely on.
In general it's perfectly sensible to have these views _IF_ you don't know better (and most noobs don't):
1. Engine devs can be considered an authority to all-things engine-related
2. Game/content devs can be considered an authority to all-things related to their game/content.
3. Old (and especially post-heavy) users are likely to have detailed knowledge regarding most things.
4. Mod/admin titles implies that this person has to be listened to in terms of enforcing forum rules/behavior.

The same kind of thing applies to most other sites: from wine making to hardware. Being able to easily discern the credibility of the person given by the community of that site is of great importance. There's a reason people look very closely to the posts of so-called "blues" (company official posts) on most other gaming sites. It's really not that important what users unrelated to the project being discussed have to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Your reasoning is flawed and based entirely around a fallacy, ironically proving that just because you have a moderator title you're not in fact infallible.


User has been warned for this post (Spoke against a moderator). Butthurt Moderator
Last edited by Evangelion on 16 Dec 2014, 01:09, edited 2 times in total.
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Silentwings
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Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Silentwings »

Not to say its never happened, but I don't remember a single case of any one person on this forum refering to their "title" to justify their views (successfully or otherwise). The idea that a little line describing "what you do in Spring" is somehow a status symbol that you can hide behind is afaik without evidence; the only discussion of my own that I remember was me being unpleasantly harassed over its precise nomenclature by a dis-satisfied user.
Last edited by Silentwings on 10 Dec 2014, 13:27, edited 1 time in total.
gajop
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Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by gajop »

You either don't understand English or logic.
I never said authority makes someone correct. It's just smart to listen to those people if you know nothing: much like kids listen to their parents until they have enough critical thinking capabilities and learning resources to ignore them.

Did you also ignore your elementary teachers because they could be wrong? Would you rather listen to your 1st grade classmate or a teacher with something that's in the teacher's field of expertise? The teacher could of course be wrong, but if you can't tell the difference, who would you rather listen to?
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Evangelion
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Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Evangelion »

gajop wrote:You either don't understand English or logic.
I never said authority makes someone correct. It's just smart to listen to those people if you know nothing: much like kids listen to their parents until they have enough critical thinking capabilities and learning resources to ignore them.

Did you also ignore your elementary teachers because they could be wrong? Would you rather listen to your 1st grade classmate or a teacher with something that's in the teacher's field of expertise? The teacher could of course be wrong, but if you can't tell the difference, who would you rather listen to?
Nice ad hominem and strawman, I thought that was against rules? You should be able to tell me that because of your title. :regret:

User has been warned for this post (felony 4). SirMaverick
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SinbadEV
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Joined: 02 May 2005, 03:56

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by SinbadEV »

Since now we've gotten to the point of nit-picking... I have a few nits to pick too... you know... things we might as well fix if we are already fixing things:
Don't bother clicking, I made is tiny so it would work inline.
Don't bother clicking, I made is tiny so it would work inline.
MislabeledOrPlaced480px.png (48.85 KiB) Viewed 8932 times
Some "Author" doodads are under the "Message" header and some "Message" doodads are under the "Author" header.
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knorke
Posts: 7971
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 01:02

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by knorke »

gajop wrote:You are twisting things. No one is saying that having titles makes one "correct" or anything, but it DOES show authority which is something new users can rely on.
You call it "titles shows authority", I called it "titles make post gain weigth", forum rules call it "Your E-Resume does not make you right" - imo it means all the same thing.
gajop wrote:1. Engine devs can be considered an authority to all-things engine-related
2. Game/content devs can be considered an authority to all-things related to their game/content.
3. Old (and especially post-heavy) users are likely to have detailed knowledge regarding most things.
4. Mod/admin titles implies that this person has to be listened to in terms of enforcing forum rules/behavior.
1) "Engine devs" is the only usergroup with actual meaningful criterica where membership is not random.
2) No, there can be modders who do not know much about their own game except the part (say "balance") that interessts them. It is entirely possible to have stuff in your mod where you have no idea how it works.
3) Maybe. Sometimes it really is a matter of just "Trust me, I have experience, just believe me.", simply for sake of keeping post short.
But nobody should be more likely to believe something simply because it was written by an old user with many posts.
As soon as real facts appear (test case/link to wiki/code etc) saying "it was fine two years ago" or similiar stops being a valid arguement and titles or registration dates (should) go out the window.
Sometimes titled XY-devs seem to confuse the authority (as in competence) that their title SHOWS with the competence that they actually HAVE.

Silentwings wrote:Not to say its never happened, but I don't remember a single case of any one person on this forum refering to their "title" to justify their views (successfully or otherwise). The idea that a little line describing "what you do in Spring" is somehow a status symbol that you can hide behind is afaik without evidence
I do remember people trying to use their "title" in arguements.
But that is rare and usually just makes them look silly.
Other thing is how the status is a protection to bans. (moderators clean up offending posts but give no warning, or nothing happens despite being far over warning limit, while "common people" get perma-banned for less.)
That is sad, but can live with it.
The most annoying abuse of titles is the most subtle and most common one:
Using the authority that the title shows to get away with posting things that otherwise would lead to being labeled as incompetent and trolling.
As an XY-dev one can make wild claims, present them in unacceptable ways, argue about things where everybody can see that peopleperson does not know what is speaking about, but it STILL must be taken serious, because it is "an actual XY-dev" who says it.
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SinbadEV
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Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by SinbadEV »

knorke wrote:But nobody should be more likely to believe something simply because it was written by an old user with many posts.
Yeah... the only people who have been round longer than me are immigrants from tauniverse.com and I have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time.
luckywaldo7
Posts: 1398
Joined: 17 Sep 2008, 04:36

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by luckywaldo7 »

Forboding Angel wrote:And post content too. Everyone knows we really don't really need them.
Good idea.

Actually, I have a mockup of that the forum could look like.

Image

Now thats clean and distraction free.
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Silentwings
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Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Silentwings »

Your image is the wrong width for my browser :p
luckywaldo7
Posts: 1398
Joined: 17 Sep 2008, 04:36

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by luckywaldo7 »

Silentwings wrote:Your image is the wrong width for my browser :p
I was really embarrassed that I made it so wide, then I checked with firefox, chrome, chromium, opera, rekonq, and qupzilla. What the hell are you using. o_0
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Forboding Angel »

I use Lynx. Wassup noob?

Related and actually useful for windows web devs:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B25Bb ... authuser=0

Lynx, master race.
Image
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Peet
Malcontent
Posts: 4383
Joined: 27 Feb 2006, 22:04

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Peet »

My title justifies my views, and I will not hear otherwise.
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by AF »

In order to appease everybody, here is my solution:

Image

Changes:
  • Avatars are now 100px!
  • Avatars are now circles as this is trendy
  • Avatars are now 60% opacity so they aren't distracting
  • Titles are now set in Papyrus so that they aren't taken too seriously by new users
  • Titles are now larger so that they're not overlooked
  • Subject row removed to save vertical space and reduce unnecessary clutter
  • Post date moved inline and to the right of post content

I should also note that post counts were removed from the forums, for the same reasons ( amongst others ) that people want titles to be removed. There is a precedent, but if you want to cut out cruft, remove the location and join date instead, they serve no use.
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Peet
Malcontent
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Joined: 27 Feb 2006, 22:04

Re: Seriously... About the Forum Avatars

Post by Peet »

Let's get rid of those useless crufty usernames and switch to an anonymous imageboard.
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