What are your views on Emoticons in posts?

Blueshark

I am weighing up the pros and cons of using them on my forum. I notice Mark has opted out of them, even though I know they are very popular. So it got me wondering. I think they are a nice thing to have, they can emphasize a mood and add colour. But, they are also overused, and they have a tendency to make the contributer use lazy English. Furthermore, you could even say they are childish, and a distraction to the essense of the topic. Perhaps the responsible action is to get the poster to write eloquently, (everyone can do this, if they try) and leave the emoticons to Myspace and teen forums. It is just a discussion, I am not sure which way I want to go yet!

garymardell

well you pretty much summed it up for yourself :P you have one good point and a whole paragraph of bad points. I do not like emoticons. I think that even text :) sums it up as well as a image.

strawberries

blueshark, you have outlined EXACTLY the thought process that I went through over the past month or two. I love Jazzman's extension, vanillaicons....and downloaded it and tried it a few weeks back. I then took it off, because I felt that emoticons (in general) probably take away from the chat and are possibly a distraction (especially since they always sit at the bottom of each page, below the comments box (and the icons are animated, thus always jumping around). But after initially deciding for many weeks NOT to use them....I now have in the past 2 weeks decided to use them. And they do add to the conversation and spice up the humour in the chats. I can't give you a yes or no for your site..but they work for mine. And posters who were initially reluctant in my forum to use them, have now been won over too. They are using them now as well.

3stripe

I think it depends on the nature of the forum... on some forums you don't want idiots pulling crazy faces all over the place.....

jimw

I guess you could run into some who would click on every icon your have to add it to the comment. Perhaps a way to limit adding only one would help stop those users. This could make it more useable.

Dinoboff

You can create preferences: use icons (have the icons bar in the comment form or not) and show icons (show smileys with icons in all the comments or not).

Blueshark

That is true Dinoboff, but would that be a User Preference? If that were the case, it could cause confusion, with different members having different preferences.

Dinoboff

Some would see smiley, other yellow icons, where is the problem (well... not so easy to create user preferences)

Blueshark

Ok I understand, similar to Text Mode.

giginger

I'm not a fan of them myself. I've seen them overused so many times that they're painful to see.

That said, sometimes it's better to see a single emoticon thatn )))))))))))) or at the end of every post. I always wonder about the state of someones mind when they have to add such things after every post. )))))))))

Donza

I love them!

LOL sorry

pbear

Animated emoticons are greatly more annoying than plain images (sorry Donza! ).

And there's always the people who forget what character combinations produces them and you have the odd replacement in the middle of a block of text. They are also the ones who care not to go back and edit it.

But! You can get a low color, low contrast set or limit the available options.

Plus (to go a little farther astray) the Vanillacon engine is useful for easy image subsitution in posts. Think :arrow: :important: :warning: :spoiler: etc. Easier to insert than having to figure out the HTML/BBCode and everyone who uses them will have the exact same format. And you can change it universally if you decide to redo the theme/style.