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Larger avatars for these boards, please

chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
in Site Resources
The avatar pictures on these forums are so tiny, you can hardly see them, unless you go to the person's profile. What's up with that? Is this a "less is more" thing? It doesn't convince me. The avatar is the face of a person online, let us see each other.

Comments

  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited August 2016
    Artemius_I said:

    Oh god please no. There are too many forums filled with clutter and unnecessarily using up too much space for no good reason. This is one thing these forums absolutely does right. I'm not even up for the idea of signatures.

    Ahem, what the hell are you talking about? What does "unnecessarily using up too much space" even mean? Do you imagine yourself a Noah who must count every square inch in the arc, or existence will topple over? This is the bloody Internet, it's LIMITLESS. You can put anything you want in an interface, imagine that. If you want to start cutting things off, why not reduce your username to a couple of letters with some binary code? How does Ar0010 sound? I just saved a lot of space and streamlined the experience!
  • MagpieRandomsMagpieRandoms Member Posts: 72
    Have you seen a magpie up close? Those beady eyes can bore into your soul. You're practically asking for Armageddon.
  • RodrianRodrian Member Posts: 426
    Now, when I'm not fully convinced on the bigger avs, BG's portraits-dialogue style could be a nifty way of change, so just taller - I think - would be nicer. .
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    Bubbles said:

    or simply use in-browser zooming ^^.

    Like.
  • ButtercheeseButtercheese Member Posts: 3,766
    Rodrian said:

    Now, when I'm not fully convinced on the bigger avs, BG's portraits-dialogue style could be a nifty way of change, so just taller - I think - would be nicer. .

    I literally went "oooouuuuuuh" on that one.
    Making the forum posts look like actual in game dialouge would be super rad.

    But yeah, a lot of forums tend to overdo it on the cluster and for dyslexic people like me it reaaaally helps when there is a neatly sorted layout as we have here.

    When it comes to the avatars, you can just crop the image for in forum use on your profile.
    Would prefer it if more people would make use of that feature :/
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    I can't see a thing, crop or not. Is this gnome land?
  • ButtercheeseButtercheese Member Posts: 3,766
    chimeric said:

    Is this gnome land?

    Yes.
  • EdvinEdvin Member, Translator (NDA) Posts: 3,244
    I agree with this idea.
    We need little bit longer avatars to be able to use standard BG portrait format.
  • BelegCuthalionBelegCuthalion Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 454
    edited September 2016
    I'm here for the discussions, not for the portrait images.
    If i want to see images, or if i want to present artwork, i can go to deviantart.

    Adding more meta around the actual content is only a good idea if the meta has some purpose ... if it just clutters things, draw attention, repeat patterns and obfuscates the content, it's to be questioned in interface design.

    For example:
    – User image: stay, it's for orientation, but its size is enough to identify most known users by just a glimpse. That's what it is there for, not for representation.
    – Username: stay, it's for identification, but more precise than an image could ever be (as it's unique unlike any image)
    – Date of post: stay, it's for orientation in the timeline (especially: when was the last post)
    – Posts number of user: questionable – It's no quality indicator, just quantity, so what is it actually telling me? i'd say that could go away actually, or appear on hover only.
    – Buttons below the post: stay, they have a function, but instead of the social network icons one could do a "share" link same style as the rest, and have those in a hover box then.
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    edited September 2016
    As long as they aren't much bigger, I'm ok with it. I use ava's to identify poster just fine as it is. If someone has trouble seeing what the ava's look like, then someone might entertain the idea of getting glasses.

    The last thing I want to see is the use if signatures. Not that that was up for discussion now, but I've visited my fair share of forums with huge avatars and where people can use limitless space for their large, often animate, signatures.
    Post edited by Skatan on
  • mf2112mf2112 Member, Moderator Posts: 1,919
    edited September 2016
    As @Buttercheese said, users can define better thumbnails than the forum software does. Just click the little gear icon below and to the right of your username, then click Edit Profile, then Change My Picture. As the title there says, click and drag across the picture to define your thumbnail. The forum software is not terrible at it, but depending on the picture it can be tough. You can try several times and then confirm it.

    Also agree, no signatures. :shudder:
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    Skatan said:

    As long as they aren't much bigger, I'm ok with it. I use ava's to identify poster just fine as it is. If someone has trouble seeing what the ava's look like, then someone might entertain the idea of getting glasses.

    The last thing I want to see is the use if signatures. Not that that was up for discussion now, but I've visited my fair share of forums with huge avatars and where people can use limitless space for their large, often animate, signatures.

    Disagree with both. Having normal avatars is not a matter of recognizing who wrote what. It's a matter of seeing a virtual face, a representation of a person online. We are bodyless ghosts here, and one of the few ways to express character so we can have some human interaction, in addition to smilies, is through an avatar. And signatures are important too, to some people. I've never found a line so interesting that I wanted to repeat it forever, but love is love. Let the flowers bloom. There should be a length limit, of course, enough for a sentence or two. None of this is crucial, but I would like the process of perusing the boards to give me pleasure, and right now they just don't.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    So what's so great about this forum? Let's see: the backgrounds are a dull black. The pictures are tiny and you can hardly tell one poster from another. The smilies are not especially cool, and where is :eyeroll ? No signatures to express yourself even a little bit. All straight to business and laced-up, eh? Learning from office minimalists, are we? "Sorry everyone, there is no water cooler anymore. You know what the price of oil is! And Jerry, I docked your monitor stickers. You'll get them back when you learn to shine your shoes, or better my shoes."

    :angry:
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    chimeric said:


    Disagree with both. Having normal avatars is not a matter of recognizing who wrote what. It's a matter of seeing a virtual face, a representation of a person online. We are bodyless ghosts here, and one of the few ways to express character so we can have some human interaction, in addition to smilies, is through an avatar. And signatures are important too, to some people. I've never found a line so interesting that I wanted to repeat it forever, but love is love. Let the flowers bloom. There should be a length limit, of course, enough for a sentence or two. None of this is crucial, but I would like the process of perusing the boards to give me pleasure, and right now they just don't.

    I see your point, but I don't agree. I've already learned to recognize your avatar being "you". You are no longer a faceless ghost to me, you are chimeric, the person with strong feelings about avatars and some kind of pink star-monster ava.

    This is a forum, you are meant to express yourself with words, not pictures in the form of avatars and signatures. If you give ppl a signature space and limit it to X lines/words I think it won't take that long 'til some start to demand/request more space/lines etc.

    If you want to express yourself to give forumites a better understanding of you, you have your own profile page to do that. If you like gif's it's quite common to post using animated memes and the likes.

    I agree about the emoticons being slightly limited though, which feels a bit out of date. Not that it bothers me that much, I can always just post a pic instead if I really want to express myself without words.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    But who goes to the profile page? What's there to do - count the user's posts? Even that is already shown next to the tiny pic here. You could go there to find the discussions the user has started or to send a PM, but all that is strictly functional, and partly obsolete because of the @ quoting function etc. I think the older-style avatar forums and signatures, crazy as they were sometimes, went some way towards fostering a sense of community and identity, conventional as those are, which helps creativity. There should be some reasonable limit, of course, but with these little pictures... It's not a pink star that I have! It's the Nightmare Stone! On the palm of Zordrak, Lord of Nightmares!

    But you wouldn't know it from this circumcised representation.

    And strong feelings about avatars? Nah. About faces and voice - yes. It's just not such a brilliant change to take the old junky forum style away, kill it and put a conference-room style instead. Strictly business. Well, I ain't here for business, I'm here for fun - fun from playing, modding, talking...
  • mf2112mf2112 Member, Moderator Posts: 1,919
    Members here go to other member's profile pages fairly often actually, if you followed the activity page you would notice that people post on their walls sometimes but often on other people's walls.

    I do that, and I also go to the members profile pages so I can easily look at their insightful and agreed posts on threads I did not view for whatever reason. Sometimes I also find them insightful or agreeable as well and mark them so. Sometimes I find comments or threads they posted that did not get an answer so I try to answer if I can or @ notify someone who might or just bump it.

    For the pictures, well...I can see yours as part of a ring on a finger maybe now that you say that. Perhaps you could upload a larger picture for the avatar that actually shows the hand to give some context, then use the forum picture option to drag a small box around the area for the avatar picture you want to give that closer in view.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    I dunno, profiles don't inspire me. I guess I might put some links on my own wall, that might be useful... Writing on walls is about as exciting as listening to music through earphones. Each lost in his own little world. It should all be out here, the music should be out here... But I won't press the point anymore. I give up! After all, this isn't Baldur's Gate from 1998, it's Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition from 2015, for people who think music in earphones is as great as a rock concert. What a desert terrain. The ash-colored background is just right for it.
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,758
    According to the vanilla staff, the avatars on the discussions page will begin to break the theme itself if they are bigger than 40/40.

    As for changing the aspect ratio of pictures ("to make it BGish"), the problem is even bigger. Here is its description and reasons why it shouldn't be done.

    But there's an option to change the sizes that thumbnails are saved at. As an experiment, I've changed it from 40/40 to 60/60. The result can be seen at https://forums.beamdog.com/activity in terms of the size of my thumbnail if compared to, for example, Skatan's thumbnail.

    Users will have to re-upload their avatars for the resolution to take effect.

    Let's test it for a few days and decide. What are your opinions?
  • lefreutlefreut Member Posts: 1,462
    edited November 2019
    ***
    Post edited by lefreut on
  • mf2112mf2112 Member, Moderator Posts: 1,919
    edited September 2016
    lefreut said:

    Personally, I don't care if avatar sizes are changed or not. I only want to answer to this:

    JuliusBorisov said:

    As for changing the aspect ratio of pictures ("to make it BGish"), the problem is even bigger. Here is its description and reasons why it shouldn't be done.

    This seems a lazy answer. It's not that hard to have an algorithm that crop images in a sane way. You can even allow different aspect ratio to not break the current avatar for example. And you can also reject images that have a completely incorrect aspect ratio or size where you know the cropping will fail or produce a bad result.
    The source code was there if you wanted to take a shot at adding that functionality. However, it wouldn't help here since it was not for Vanilla-hosted forums.
  • NimranNimran Member Posts: 4,875
    Now imagine my picture, but all over you screen!
  • Troodon80Troodon80 Member, Developer Posts: 4,110
    Yeah... no, I don't want to imagine that. I have 8K-UHD over four monitors.
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