PM Question

[Zorotama]

With the same time you spent to write your message you could have resized your avatar without adding comments to the discussion. Never to late to do it, dear.

Do it. Resize it. And then argue what, how and how much you want.

[xander]

I was actually arguing that the forum should be able to auto-resize avatar images to 80x80.

The forum uses CSS to resize avatars. There are two problems with this: (1) some browsers (notably IE) don't adhere to the CSS standard, and display the full sized image anyway and (2) every browser must download the image at its original size, then rescale it. The latter problem is actually the bigger deal for most people (though it should be noted that there are people who are stuck with IE). This means that if you have a 10000x10000 pixel avatar that weighs in at 40 MB, every time someone loads a page upon which you have posted, they must download all 40 MB of your avatar, which will ultimately be rescaled to 80x80. This is an enormous waste of bandwidth, even if your avatar is only 1 MB, particularly for people who are using mobile devices and have to pay for the bandwidth that they use.

As to technical means, there is nothing that the forums can do to enforce a real 80x80 pixel hard limit. It might be possible for the software to check your avatar's size every time someone requests a page, but that is going to get out of hand in terms of CPU time very quickly. Anything short of that isn't going to work, as one could easily change the image that is pointed to by a particular URL. Alternatively, IV could download every person's avatar, and keep an 80x80 (or smaller) copy locally, and serve that up every time it is requested. Again, this is a problem, as IV could be sued for infringing copyrights, and would be wasting their server space pointlessly.

Ultimately, however, it is about basic politeness. There is a difficult-to-enforce rule stating that avatars must be under 80x80 pixels. People have complained. Instead of being a douche nozzle, why don't you just fucking fix it?

xander

[TGR]

Instead of being a douche nozzle.
xander

Ironic coming from the largest douche on the forum. You come out of the woodwork occasionally to comment, yet never have anything nice to say.
All you do is deride other forum members and act uppity and holier than thou. I know from conversation that a number of members are in agreement with this.


Don't be a douch nozzle , Xander.


TGR

[Nukraine]

pardon me, but how does one find the size of his current avatar

[xander]

pardon me, but how does one find the size of his current avatar

If you right-click on the image, you should be able to open it, and most browsers will give the size of the image in the title bar. You could also save the image, open it up with, say, MS Paint, and get the size. Your's is 64x64, by the way.

xander

[bert_the_turtle]

And duh, of course "Copyright" was just the quick fire reason, I don't have much time myself. The real reason is that copying someone else's avatar verbatim is confusing for everyone and is on the same line as copying someone else's name in game. That's just an argument that would longer to flesh out properly. Not any more, though, since you seem to have figured that one out for yourselves already.

Bert was actually talking out his ass. That emphasis is my own...

Nope, I was restating the official reasoning and the official policy as stated by NeoThermic, the proper board admin who just hasn't got much time lately: The way it is set up, the board software CAN'T check avatar sizes. It would be technically possible, of course, but it's just not a feature available for externally linked avatars. Hence you're supposed to implement the restrictions yourself. If you don't, someone notices sooner or later and kindly asks you to resize. If you then don't, you get your avatar removed, with an invitation to reset it properly. If that needs to be done too often, you get it removed permanently. Do you have any arguments against this procedure except "It's working fine for a subset of people" and ad hominem attacks?

No? Ok, with that out of the way, Kangaraptor's avatar has been removed, he is invited to set a new one with the proper size.
Endless is asked to resize his avatar.
OpenFlow's avatar-less state is completely his own choice, in case you're wondering.

[-- Tobias --]

What fools dare rustle the feathers, or should I say scratch the shell, of bert_the_turtle? Not only is he omnipotent, but he is (almost) always right. (No one is perfect.)

His solution reminds me of an old climatic Batman fight scene: zowie -- boom -- woosh. It is done.