Avatar Restructuring and Signature Query

Silver Sonic said:

Mystic said:

You now upload the avatar to Sepwich

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How? I don´t know where to upload am I stupid?

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I'm feeling generous, so I will now give some help on how to do this, complete with screenshots.

ARROW'S HOMESPUN WISDOM
VOLUME 1: UPLOADING AVATARS

Step 1: Click the Profile link at the top of the forums. It would be a smart idea to use Firefox or IE7 to open a new tab to do this, so that you don't click out of this advice post and then have no earthly idea what you're doing.



Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of the screen. Under the heading "Avatar Control Panel", you will see two input bars. Using them, you can either upload an image file from your computer to use as an avatar, or upload one from the web.



Step 3a: If you're uploading from the web, paste the link for the image file in the second input bar, next to "Upload Avatar from a URL", and then click the Submit button at the bottom.

Step 3b: If you're uploading from your PC, click the browse button, and use the open dialog to hunt through your hard drive until you find the appropriate file. Double-click the file, then click the Submit button at the bottom.

Step 4: If the image you chose is too big for the forum, you will be taken back to the top of the Profile page and will receive either the following message, explaining that its filesize is too big, or a second one that informs you that it's screensize is above the 128x128 max.



Step 4b: If this is the case, use convenient programs like MS Paint, Gimp, Paint Shop Pro, or Photoshop to make the size of the image smaller, or save it in a filesize that compresses it more (JPG is probably the best choice for pictures as small as avatars). Note: All of those programs are for Windows. Any Mac users here can list me some good programs for their setup and I'll be happy to edit this post and add links.

Step 5: Once you've done that, upload it again. If it's small enough this time, or if it fit under the guidelines to begin with, you'll get the following screen. You're done!

This helps! Thank you!

Arrow, once again, wins the internets.

Silver Sonic loses. Horribly.

I nominate this board the most dial up and bandwith friendly, this year.

Though to be honest, it sucks. Less than 15kb avatars? Wohoo, very little selection there. I already hated how AIM had limits, now it's happening somewhere else too? Well that's great.

I'm glad i don't show up here much, so it's no big deal. =D *Shot*

SSNTails said:

I'm "somewhat for" removing signatures, because that really decreases the amount of policing that moderators have to do to make sure the sigs conform.

Or is there a way we can just disable HTML/BBCode in signatures?

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I don't know if I agree with that.

Considering the time I spent as an admin at a clan site for a machinima group, I've seen the sort of restrictions that can be put in place. That being said, I've never heard of banning image signatures entirely.

Of course rules were set in place to keep the place as friendly as possible, but when they were violated (which was rare) the forum user was warned and the signature was usually removed. The reason I say this so lightly is because it really wasn't a big deal with the moderators and myself. I don't really see why it might be here; the average percentage of active members is about the same.

Are some people really so dense here that they violate these rules often enough to initiate a ban?

I'm pretty sure filesize comes into play, but that's usually helped with dimension restrictions. 100x500 (HxW) was good enough for us.

As for advertising, I suppose it ought to work just like appropriate restrictions, but again, this begs the question of just how many people here are so ignorant of the rules that they'd continually violate set rules.

High Hat 314 said:

Are some people really so dense here that they violate these rules often enough to initiate a ban?

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...

Are you implying something there...!?

Yes, he's implying that there's quite a few idiots here that don't read the rules.
And it's true. <_<

I wouldn't think so. Most people here that got avatars removed just made stupid mistakes. Hell, when I got my priviledges removed, I opened up MS Paint to shrink the image to make sure it didn't break any rules. I made a mistake, and the image wound up being 147 pixels, instead of 144.

The thing is High Hat, is that there are basically two moderators for the entire board. I don't think AJ's done more than ten things, and Arrow I don't think has done anything. So it's basically Mystic and FF policing the entire board, which is obviously quite a headache.

Sonicandtails218 said:

The thing is High Hat, is that there are basically two moderators for the entire board. I don't think AJ's done more than ten things, and Arrow I don't think has done anything. So it's basically Mystic and FF policing the entire board, which is obviously quite a headache.

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Which is why they are left with two options: Make the rules tougher or up the security. I think it's more of a hastle to hire people.

Sonicandtails218 said:

The thing is High Hat, is that there are basically two moderators for the entire board. I don't think AJ's done more than ten things, and Arrow I don't think has done anything. So it's basically Mystic and FF policing the entire board, which is obviously quite a headache.

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I can understand that.

One thing I neglected to mention about the board I used to administrate was that, although it was more than or equal to this board's average active users, there were more people moderating. Four admins, three moderators, if I remember right. Quite a substantial difference now that I consider it.

If only there were people here you could trust to actively moderate.

I'm not saying you ought to, I only dislike the idea of restrictive artistic privellige, especially since signatures were a big thing on the board I used to administrate.

Either way, it's your board, and I've only been here for about 48 hours. You definitely know more about this community than I do.

And Zeshiro, I'm not nodding at you, I was speaking generally. I mean, I've only been here so long; all I can speak is general statements.

Sounds like a guilty conscience if you ask me.

logokas said:

Less than 15kb avatars? Wohoo, very little selection there.

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As I stated before, we have more than enough allowance of space for avatars as small as 128x128 pixels. If you have a serious problem making an avatar that small take up less than 10 or 15 KB of space, you really need to rethink how you're saving your images. My avatar is little more than 1 KB in size and 100 pixels on each side. This is obviously not a problem with indexed formats like gif. But even if you're saving an image in jpg, you hardly need that much quality for something that's going to take up no more than a 128 pixel square on your monitor.

Why are you people still debating over this? It's done with, get over it.

The only reason you'd really need more than 10 KB is for an animation. Even then, you can still squeeze it under 10 KB, I'm sure. Unless you use one of those huge long ones that are half a meg.

You know, we should also get a small piece of text at the bottem of our avatars... Just to add more to it, many other forums do it, so why not SRB2 forums?

Use your location. That's a small chunk of text below your avatars..

..but isn't that what the sig is for?

Uh, you have room, FireLaserBeam. Just put the text under your avatar with MS Paint.

Why add more features than we need? This is a forum, not a video game. You want complex and interesting, I'd suggest playing a netgame of SRB2 or something.

Shuffle said:

Use your location. That's a small chunk of text below your avatars..

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Not anymore. *point*

Mystic said:

This is a forum, not a video game.

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The forum isn't a game? Then why are we talking about a game all the time? Why are we releasing level/chars all the time to play on a game called SRB2, then?