Let's Discuss Smilies

I am looking at the smilie situation.

It seems the biggest catagory is Flags with...294!!!..smilies. 294 Flags? Damn.

If we want a faster smilie utility the fact is we need to prune it back a bit. And that means choosing things to go. I don't know if there is a Technical option, hack or whatever that wouldn't involve an overhaul so I am going on what I do know.

How attached to Flags are people?? Because 294 flags wouldn't be a bad place to start IMO.

For a comparison, the second largest catagory is "Newer Smilies" with 103

Another drain on load times is the Giant Smilies catagory.

So people are going to have to choose slow, draggy loadtimes or a ruthless weeding out.

Let's discuss thoughts, options and ideas. I'm all ears.

Could the standard set of smilies in Advanced Reply be changed?

Right now we have: :IMHO!:

Most of these smilies are rarely used and the code for and is pretty well known.

Not sure what the better selection would be but it should include and

Flags are useless.

Wouldn't mind losing any of these: :IMHO!: :warning: :suck: :argue: :kill: :xmassad: :cannibal: :hangover: :micro: :beatnik: :bittersweet: :time: :kor: arty: :juggle:

Also Metal Slug, Icons and Flags could go too.

We should definitely keep

If I posted all the smilies I thought we should remove in the thread, it'd take almost as long as the smilies page to load.

EDIT: Ah, hell, I'll just put 'em behind a Spoilers tag.

And the following unless modifications are made to make them better fit into the board (i.e. transparent backgrounds):

Nobody's going to like this post!

Well, there is no way we will get rid of all of them. Most of us enjoy them. But it is getting a bit weighed down with a lot of unused stuff.

Birthday threads wouldn't be the same without the group of dancing bananas...
I would agree with Clyde that it would be better to tidy up the smilies in advanced reply, but then I know the code for those I use most often, and hardly ever need to look at the full list...

This might be better:

The "ribbons" can be pruned.

I actually like the large collection of smilies.

Kill the ribbons and some of the flags, sez I! Keep the smilies!

This has been suggested before.

You know the [More] link at the bottom of the Smilies field? Split it up into several links.

[More] - "WF Classics", "Newer Smilies", "Usernamed Smilies".

[Even More] - "Bananas", "Giant" (I wouldn't mind seeing about half a dozen of these disappear, but goshdarnit, they're generally among the more popular of the lot). (Obviously this link could use a better name.)

[Themed] - "Icons" (a.k.a. zodiac signs), "Flags", "Metal Slug" (although I wouldn't mind seeing this last one go).

[All] - for when you feel like punishing your aggravating dialup connection.


Thematically, the bananas should go under [Themed], but numerically, they shouldn't. Plus they're actually used for posts and not just sigs.

Also - as much as I like , shouldn't it and its companion both be in the "Giant" section?

Also - I think there might be enough smilies to sort out into their own section. Call it (and this is another title that could use polishing) "Pop Culture Smilies That Just Sit There And Don't Really Do Anything". , , the PacMan smilies, , maybe :kor:, maybe , probably . actually conveys something (how ironic!) and would not go under this title. (If you want to call the section "Pop Culture Smilies", then yeah, put in there.) I'd put this section under the [Even More] link.

smilies I could stand to see go:

I wouldn't miss : belly : or that one with the dancing rabbit (which is the most useless smiley ever) and all those flags, ribbons and astrology signs.

The rest is okay, IMO, and shrinking up the STFU smiley is a good idea [-]so that I can post it as muh as possible without ruining people's browsers[/-]

Well, of classics, I never see anyone use...

:warning: :argue:
:suck: :kill: :cannibal:

Keep all the usernamed ones.

Biggest cuts would be from the new ones, and the big ones.

Wipe out the zodiacs and flags.

Metal slug negotiable, although no one hardly uses them, but they pop up here and there, but like 5 key ones.

I like to use : sroll : from time to time, as do a few others.

The rest can go.

Won't there be tons of smilies even if you start pruning them? I don't know about load times but navigation is a bit of a chore anyway. Why not implement a hack to categorize them, to load them in blocks? Then you wouldn't have to hear complaints from people missing their favorite smiley, and you could still add more.

I suggested that too, but I guess it would take some hacking.

Oh, and the smiley button in quick reply hasn't worked in ages.

It should be possible to run some kind of inquiry to determine which are used regularly. That, plus losing the flags, would be a good start. And I like the "categories" idea, hack or not.

You can get rid of if you want.

I also like the :cannibal: smiley. It's a bit specialized, but it's bound to have its uses with all the threads we have about the RIAA and computer and gaming companies

There aren't that many smileys I actively dislike. Most of them have their uses, even if they seem to overlap. Sometimes I feel like a , sometimes I feel like a :rofl3:, sometimes I'm not amused enough to warrant more than a , you know?


With regard to the hacking involved, it doesn't seem to me like it should be very difficult (except for the fact that computers are involved). The "source code" for the smiley box is

Code:

var smilieoptions = new Array(); smilieoptions = { 
	'WF classics' : {
		'18' : new Array('http://www.wordforge.net/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif', ':rolleyes:', ':rolleyes:'),
		'102' : new Array(etc.),
		'260' : etc.,
		etc.,
		etc. . . .
		'more' : 'Show all Smilies'
} };

Not to use the tech admins' work against them , but it appears that the smiley categories are already built into the code. So it looks to me as if all that's needed is to be able to call specified categories by means of the [Link]s.

Code:

'more' : 'some sort of code for calling 'WF classics', 'Newer Smileys', and 'Usernamed Smileys''

And so on.

If the enormous ones actually use more juice than the normal sized ones, all of those are what I'd kill. I've always found any smiley larger than, say, to be intrusive anyways

I rather like the flags. It would be hard to get rid of some of them without getting rid of them all.

Well, why not get rid of the flags that no one uses, and maybe keeping the flags of the places where regulars post from, keeping the US/CS (and the state/military service flags), several of the Euro countries, Australia maybe a few other countries that stay in the news and suck. Weeding out these nations that no one ever heard of or talks about.

Also, get rid of the Metal Slugs and icons and most of the big ones

Personally, I'd dump all the flags and zodiac ones . . . I don't think I've ever seen anyone use any of them. The giant ones could probably go, or be shrunk down to something more manageable.

Yeah, fuck the damn flags.

But I like :seychelles:!

I'm sorry but I am not cherry-picking 294 flags. I am sad and pathetic, but not that sad and pathetic...

I am rather inclined to dump the lot though. If people use them, they could always make copies and put them in a photobucket account or something.

Hopefully, Order2Chaos will be by to tell us what is possible on the Tech side of things.