Disable The Use Of Smilies.....Offers Nothing To Discussions

DEEP3CL · Post #1 » by **DEEP3CL** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 5:21 am

OK so I'm browsing through the GT on the GB tonight and you have a whole page almost with nothing but smilies, and for a while I've been thinking about posting here to just to gauge the feeling among posters and mods.

I've been on this forum for going on 8 years come July 2013.....anyway to me in my time here I think a lot of the so call flame wars and personal attacks or assaults on fan bases are sometimes instigated by the use of smilies. As it seems to be a means to laugh at a posters insight or thoughts on a subject without offering any intelligent response to a conversation.

I joined this basketball forum because I heard so much about it and thought that it would have mature and intelligent basketball conversation. For the most part it's been that, but to me also one of the problems that punctuates spats here are the use of smilies especially when a poster uses it just to ignite the situation.

Recently it's been sweeping changes on the GB to make it a much user friendly forum, but the balance seems to be off. Rules have been tighten on just about every aspect except smilies, which to me have no use in a mature basketball forum. I browsed other forums and some have no use of them whatsoever.

If you really want to clean the GB and stymie the attacks, and other propaganda eliminating smilies would almost wipe the slate of your posters who offer absolutely nothing to a thread other than inciting it more or trying to be funny.

If you're going to ban derailing gifs then why not smilies ? It's just the same as a poster posting a gif in my opinion. And if not a total ban on them, then maybe you can make it to where you just can't post smilies entirely by themselves. At least put some type of structured sentence in the post.

Again it's just a suggestion

Dupp · Post #2 » by **Dupp** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 10:25 am

DEEP3CL wrote:

I've been on this forum for going on 8 years come July 2013.....anyway to me in my time here I think a lot of the so call flame wars and personal attacks or assaults on fan bases are sometimes instigated by the use of smilies. As it seems to be a means to laugh at a posters insight or thoughts on a subject without offering any intelligent response to a conversation.

or lol whats the difference? They are already eliminating posts that offer nothing to threads anyway so you really dont see many one emotion posts at all.

And if its in the game thread who cares?

That was a bull **** call

Or

That was a bull **** call, i am angry.

Seriously who cares?

DEEP3CL · Post #3 » by **DEEP3CL** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 10:39 am

That's a lie.....I still see them,grown men or those who think they are shouldn't be using "smilies" period.

Dupp · Post #4 » by **Dupp** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 10:57 am

Grown men? lol what does it matter, its the internet.

ReturnofMVP3 · Post #5 » by **ReturnofMVP3** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 1:06 pm

I think smilies are great. In fact the :lol:

is something on almost all my posts! What's so wrong with having a laugh or expressing emotion through visuals. What next get rid of youtube and posting pictures? Adults and lots of professionals use visuals to get their points across.

Sofia · Post #6 » by **Sofia** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 2:56 pm

Dutuctive Depp wrote:Grown men? lol what does it matter, its the internet.

Child please.

Fight the good fight Deep3cl! :usa:

hermes · Post #7 » by **hermes** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 4:33 pm

how will i express my facial expressions!

Post #8 » by **Howard Mass** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 5:31 pm

We did restrict smiles a bit on The General NBA Forum.

I doubt we ever get rid of them but a crackdown on smile only posts could happen and even is considered Derailing Discussion in some cases.

Gek · Post #9 » by **Gek** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 7:02 pm

Emoticons are part of the internet. Removing them will only cause trouble.

DEEP3CL · Post #10 » by **DEEP3CL** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 7:20 pm

Gek wrote::nonono: Emoticons are part of the internet. Removing them will only cause trouble.

No it won't. Care to explain ?

Gek · Post #11 » by **Gek** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 8:51 pm

Internet will most likely collapse.

I wasn't being very serious...

But here - I'll toss you a bone because I like you, Deep. You can disable them appearing as smilies and have them appear as text instead.

DEEP3CL · Post #12 » by **DEEP3CL** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 9:22 pm

I get that GeK......that option is just for the display in the users control panel, like if I didn't want to use it. I'm talking about suggesting a restraint on them in the forums. Too many users use them as post only, yet the powers that be here insist it's been a restriction already in place. I'm just saying let's say a guy put's one on a post .....and that's all he put just to be a smart ass. When he hit's submit it shouldn't go through, this will surely cut down the posters who offer no insight to game threads, and other discussions.

Gek · Post #13 » by **Gek** » Sat Jan 5, 2013 9:28 pm

Ahh gotchya. Good luck teaching restraint to the internet, Deep. People will always find ways to contribute nothing (heck I've been working on it since I signed up here in 2004).

Although banning image only and emoticon only posts isn't a bad idea.

Post #14 » by **tsherkin** » Sun Jan 6, 2013 1:03 am

Gek wrote:Although banning image only and emoticon only posts isn't a bad idea.

In most cases, at least on the GB (which is necessarily more tightly-regulated than, say, most team forums because of size), most image/smiley-only posts ARE considered derailing and will net a user a fast-track to being put on Read-Only Access if they persist.

If you want to see more of the posts get regulated, report them when you see them instead of doing nothing but making a post in the feedback forum, DEEP.

We appreciate that you took the time to make the thread, of course, it's always nice to see thoughts and ideas being expressed and raised, especially when it's a longer and more well-considered post such as yours... but there are avenues you could be pursuing to help as well as just this. More particularly, you're not going to see tight regulation of game threads because they move WAY too quickly. You'll see post-hoc crack downs on egregious offenses and obviously the mods will respond to reported posts, but we can't sit in those threads as they develop because they are 50- to 100-page explosions waiting to happen and that's just logistically untenable.

Having said that, if you're sitting there and you see smiley-only posts, then go ahead and report them.

Beyond that, you're not going to see a crackdown on posts WITH smilies, but if the post in question is a baiting or derailing post, then by all means, report that and we'll crack down on that poster for breaking the established rules.

Does that make some sense?

ReturnofMVP3 · Post #15 » by **ReturnofMVP3** » Sun Jan 6, 2013 12:23 pm

I saved all the smilies I like onto my computer... now if they ban smilies i'll reupload them onto image hosting sites and use the [img'] ['/img] tag to post them still.. muahaha.

Post #16 » by **tsherkin** » Sun Jan 6, 2013 1:52 pm

ReturnofMVP3 wrote:I saved all the smilies I like onto my computer... now if they ban smilies i'll reupload them onto image hosting sites and use the [img'] ['/img] tag to post them still.. muahaha.

You realize that, jokes aside, if you did that you would still be warned because they would remain derailing posts and it would be obvious intent to circumvent the rules, yeah? :roll:

Heh.

ReturnofMVP3 · Post #17 » by **ReturnofMVP3** » Mon Jan 7, 2013 10:37 am

tsherkin wrote:
ReturnofMVP3 wrote:I saved all the smilies I like onto my computer... now if they ban smilies i'll reupload them onto image hosting sites and use the [img'] ['/img] tag to post them still.. muahaha.

You realize that, jokes aside, if you did that you would still be warned because they would remain derailing posts and it would be obvious intent to circumvent the rules, yeah?

Heh.

I suggest howard ban me now then :lol:

Post #18 » by **Howard Mass** » Tue Jan 8, 2013 12:52 am