Pros and cons of colored member names

[Biology Forums]

On my main forum, all usernames are colored based on their membergroup color. I'm thinking that the website will look more uniform if everyone was the same color. So, what are the benefits and downfalls of having colored membernames? Are there any prominent communities that also use this or is it juvenile and unprofessional? I know for one it will reduce server load a tad, but that's negligible.

[Arantor]

Pros to coloured member names:
- can look pretty
- can indicate status in the community

Cons:
- hits the server surprisingly hard
- reduces conformity

It works for some kinds of community, where community status is a thing. Communities where individualism is strongly emphasised (roleplay, for example) tend towards being having more use for this. I do not get the feeling your communities would benefit significantly.

[Biology Forums]

Thank you. I believe you're right. It's just another one of those things that I added at the very beginning because I thought it was the right thing to do. Moving forward, I will phase it out bit by bit, but it's not going to be easy.

Side note, some of the main players, including stackoverflow, digitalpoint, physics forums don't have it.

[Arantor]

Did you know that according to its founder, StackOverflow is a forum? I thought it was a Q&A site with a different dynamic.

You should see some of the arguments I had with the guy who founded it. Interesting discussions.

[Biology Forums]

It is a Q and A site, doesn't feel forum-like at all. In fact, I've never been a fan of that interface, and I hope it doesn't gain more popularity.

What's the URL?

[Arantor]

I would prefer not to share. It is... not the nicest of forums where those arguments happened, just after the site migrated to Discourse - the forum software built by Jeff "I know everything and you are wrong and all PHP forums are 1990s era toxic hellstew sites" Atwood.

Not a literal quote, but close enough.

[Biology Forums]

Found it... this should be entertaining

[Arantor]

It's not hard to find and you will find some... colourful... commentaries from me on there too. If you're very lucky you'll find the part where I admit how incompetent I am compared to everyone else there and how much less skilled I feel at the whole programming thing.

[Gwenwyfar]

Pretty much dependent on community. I prefer when only admins or some other important group have colors, it gets too messy if everyone has a different color, but for the community I'm admin on that would never work, they'd just keep complaining they want colors back as they always had on other forums Still to reorganize all of them once I have the chance, though.

[Antes]

Actually this bit depending on age My ex-worked forum was for 13-20 age group (mostly 15-17), they loved to see their names colored, but when you shifted more mature people they generally don't care about the name colors.

I still like to see my name colored

[Gwenwyfar]

Probably both. Younger people seem to like colored fonts on posts too. My forum has mostly people between 20 and 40... But its pretty much a community thing in there, both for being small and the focus it has

[Biology Forums]

I removed them all, but left is as an item you can buy in the shop, in case someone really wants a change.

[Gwenwyfar]

You know, that is actually a good idea. Are the colors based off groups still or some other way?

[Biology Forums]

Yes, each membergroup, namely the post groups, are colored.