[SC Redmen]

I think we should add pictures under our names. I think that would be a nice add on to the whole shebang. Other forums have this feature.

[imitchellg5]

Yes, but other forums are ugly. MacNN is pretty.

[SpaceMonkey]

Sigs can incorporate pictures.

[Andy8]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

Sigs can incorporate pictures.

Exactly.

[ghporter]

The "pic under our names" is called an avatar. No I did not make that up. It's a feature on a lot of forum systems, and it's available on ours. We've decided not to employ it for a number of reasons. One big one is that apparently 99% of forums that use avatars look like poo. It's possible they look that way for other reasons, including allowing signatures that stretch for page after page, allow animated signatures and avatars, and all sorts of other crapola. We chose to keep a simple design that does not waste users' screen space and bandwidth with off-topic and gratuitous stuff.

Maybe we could convince all our users to follow some simple rules about avatars, and maybe they'd be like they are with signatures-we spend a lot of time policing signatures here.

[turtle777]

One word: Ohhellno !

-t

[EndlessMac]

The problem I've noticed on other forums is that when accompanied with signatures it makes the whole forum look like a personal billboard when you scroll down the pages. As mentioned by Glenn avatars do waste screen space when some people's posts are rather short causing everyone to scroll through more pages. I also like how this forum has the signatures on the right so that it doesn't get in the way of reading text much.

[Simon]

No, thanks. IMHO the sleeker this place appears the better.

Indeed pics can be placed in your sig. And if it were up to me I'd get rid of those too.

[SC Redmen]

thanks ghporter. you are right because i did think that the avatars were a little crappy in the back of my head but i still thought it would have been a good idea.