Wellllllll.... I think you (mostly) are missing the point.
You are looking in your own mirrors.
You should think of OTHERS (ie the masses of new members out there). My own point of view - I won't labour it too much - is to give people what they want. But I don't mean the old soldiers, I mean the masses of new, enthusiastic, exciting, interesting people who would be a massive boost to a new, independent, no strings attached, forum.
Look, people are used to visual interaction. I don't really care what I prefer, or what you (singular) prefer... surely it is better to say, what would the average new member prefer?
Most will enjoy some visual references, reasonably sized pics and all the extra dimension that can bring.
People like some form of entertainment. People should be rewarded for logging on and visiting and contributing. Pictures allow many other aspects - you can run quizzes and competitions, easily convey meaning, even (gasp) show something like a strange warning light on your own car, or your homemade headlamp beam deflectors.
Copyright is not an issue. Trust me. No one AT ALL ever complains if their pics are used innocently. Matter of fact, if the pics are rescaled and thumbnailed there is no copyright issue anyway - see Google Images. Most companies and organisations would APPRECIATE their pics being shown. This copyright issue does not have to get overtly anal. If someone does complain (VERY unlikely, I have had millions of unique visitors and never get complaints - except BMW - but I am competing with their dealers) and often get thanked for using stuff. They are not being used to pass off, or for promotion or profit, so you are fine.
For the 99.9% of future users bandwidth is NOT an issue. If the web was built to satisfy the very small proportion of low-bandwith users, there would be no progress and as I say you can have a simple option to "show links instead of images". Then, surely EVERYONE can be happy?
But, why deny others? Especially of thousands of those others don't even know this place exists yet.
Same applies to all communication, like twitter etc. Why have icq and Messenger options, but have no facility to digg posts, tweet them, reddit them, link from facebook etc etc? What on earth is everyone frightened of? Why can't we have Twitter profile pics, or discus profiles? Or have a nice profile image someone can see?
I'm not saying it should be vBulletin yawn, but just have the options. In an attractive, controlled way. Attracting an extra 500,000 users would be great... or is this all NIMBY and you regard "new people" like internet immigrants; all diseased, unwashed, and "not suitable types"?
Ling
Discuss?
Last edited by: welshy on Tue 23 Feb 10 at 20:22
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