I have a rather rambunctious (sp?) crowd on my board, and I don't allow images in sigs, because they become far too much of a "look at me" thing, become more the point of a msg then the text itself, so I don't allow them at all. When Infopop introduced avatars, I was concerned there too, for the same "abuse" rules. I thought about it a bit, and came up with some rules for avatar usage. Below are the rules from my board, along with some commentary by me on the rules.

quote:

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1. For external avatars, only JPG, GIF, or PNG will be allowed. No .bmp files, and especially no .swf files.
2. No animated avatars.
3. No use of the 3D Realms, Remedy, or other associated company logos in your avatar without permission.
4. The size limit on avatars is 68x68 for squares, or if you want a rectangular one, 68x100 (that's 68 wide by 100 high). If it's a few pixels over in either direction, we're not gonna freak out over it, but please try and stay within these limits.
5. No objectionable content in avatar images. We reserve the right to define what content is, and deny you the ability to use avatars if you show disregard for the avatar rules.
6. If you are not using one of the built-in avatars, please don't duplicate someone else's avatar - especially if they made it themselves. Try not to rip off other people's avatar work.
   

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If someone posts an offending avatar, I remove it, and email them and tell them why. I have four pre-fab responses ready for that which I can dump into an email program. One for "too big", one for "broken image", one for "you can't use our company logo in your avatar" and one for "no animating".

The reason I don't allow animating avatars is that it quickly becomes a wasteland of "Hey, look at my avatar" instead of bothering with actual messages of substance, and unchecked, will trash the board very quickly. It's the same reason I don't allow images in signatures, because it becomes a wasteland for pEoPlE wHo tHinK it'S C00l and 7eet To TyPe ThIs WaY. People like that tend to be the type who won't pay attention to rules anyway, and just want to draw attention to themselves instead of fostering any kind of community you might be trying to build. Sorry, don't need that kind of garbage on my forums - so images in sigs are out, and the rules I quoted above for avatar usage.

Some more remarks on the rules:

1) Some people think .bmp is a valid inline image format. While IE will display it, that's the singular worst file format one could use - the stupid things are massive, even at avatar sized images. Also, .swf should be obvious as to why I disallow that. There's other things like the .txt trick to get free sites like Geocities to allow offsite image linking, but I've disallowed .txt as an image format in fairness to Geocities' rules.

2) See remarks above about animating images.

3) I don't allow folks to use our corporate logos in avatars - the reason is that I have all of our employees flagged with the company logo underneath their user name, so when you're scanning down a list of msgs, and you see the 3D Realms logo, you can see it's from one of us.

4) Size restrictions are obvious - you can't allow them too big, or it blows up the formatting of one's board.

5) Objectionable generally constitutes porn, but there's any number of things that would be removed - swastikas, hate images, other insensitive things.

6) I've had a few users swipe other's custom avatars that they made on their own. While not exactly WRONG, it's generally a tacky thing to do.

Also I remove broken image avatars, because some browsers (mostly older Netscape) don't display the page right until it can figure out what to do with every image on the page.

Also, - I don't allow people to send me images to put on our server. The reason for this is the workload it would cause. Our server and pipe doesn't have a problem with the extra bandwith that would require, but to be honest, I have other things to do than screen avatars and put 'em on our server, email people telling them where they are. I suppose if I had an assistant or something I could do that (or just had the time), but if a user wanted to change their avatar, then there's more work for me. Nah, I feel hosting users' avatars on one's server, while technically feasible, isn't workable from a time management standpoint.

Plus, UBB.classic doesn't have a file upload feature. If UBB.classic had file uploads (which it will NEVER have), it could be workable to store them on our box, as I wouldn't have to do anything, but since it doesn't, it's not an option. I think UBB.x has uploads, but I'm pretty sure it's not in avatars anyway, which means you'd have the same time issues in policing people's avatars.

I read every new msg on my board anyway every day, so if there's an offender, I'll see it. Plus I have a pretty good core group of users who will email me about board problems anyway, so if it's really bad (I've had a few people posting sex images in avatars), I get notified before I might see it myself "making my rounds".

So far all this has worked for me. When I get violations, I send 'em an email as noted above, and a link to a thread on my board which has these rules (and about 15 more pages of avatar test messages). To date, I don't think I've had a user who has refused and put the same offending avatar back. If they did, they'd get a warning, and a third time would result in a stiffer penalty, like removal of avatar privledges or something else depending on how they refused to comply.

Hope all this was helpful.

(And no, I still won't allow images in sigs, as they tend to be more of a problem than avatars are. I've been asked if I'd come up with similar style rules for image sigs, but I've decided against that, as they are more problematic than avatars are.)

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Joe Siegler
Moderator - UBB.classic Feature Suggestions Forum
Moderator - Sales & General Questions Forum

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[This message was edited by Joe Siegler on August 15, 2002 at 11:00 PM.]

Ha ha, Joe!--this thread's title sounds like you're saying "Nanny, nanny, my avatar is better than your avatar."

Great post, btw.

I thought he was braging too. :lol: Perhaps 'Rules regarding Avatars'? I agree 100% on the images in signatures.

The last time Joe posted them I incorporated some of his avatar guidelines in my Community Standards. I was lacking in that subject and his filled the void.

If anyone is looking for ideas or to revamp all their rules you're welcome to take what you need from mine as well.

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Steve
Moderator - UBB™Central's Advanced UBB.classic™ Forum

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