Avatars/sigs kept with the times

[profzelonka]

Example: A member has a certain avatar one year, then changes it to a new avatar. The new avatar should now be shown with all of his new posts from the time of the new avatar time change. All old posts should retain the old (at-the-time) avatar.

Same goes for signatures.


Would love to see this happen as a mod, or any release.

[Arantor]

Other forums have tried this. The result is usually confusion because people tend to associate avatar to post rather than username, and once the initial change has settled, people manage just fine to do this again, but if you mix and match, it not only confuses but looks buggy too.

[Steve]

... people tend to associate avatar to post rather than username ...

I don't think I agree with this portion of your post. When reading new posts the avatar lets me know quicker who made the post than actually looking over and seeing the username. Of course, that doesn't work well with people like me who changes their avatar several times a month (on my forum).

... if you mix and match, it not only confuses but looks buggy too.

Totally agree.

[Arantor]

So you completely agree with my point then: people look at the avatar rather than the username.

[Kindred]

yeah, I think Steve misunderstood your point.

Like Facebook...  when you change your avatar, it changes everywhere, even historically...

because people link the avatar to the user, not specifically the name.
When people change an avatar, it takes the other users a day or two to recognize the change... but then, everything going forward is understood.

by keeping an old avatar, for old posts, users will THINK that the post was made by two different people....

[Steve]

Oops, somehow I read the opposite of what Arantor said so yes, I do fully agree.

[landyvlad]

So we all agree to agree?  Cool, I agree with that.


To the OP - I think you can see the generally held opinion is that it would be counter-productive.  However I am interested to know if you think there are any particular advantages to doing it? (I can't think of any which is why I ask).

[profzelonka]

That's a fair observation.

Advantages would vary to the communities of course, but the main attraction is simple: Increase in post value.
- User: Is able to partake in a time capsule, capturing not only their post at the time but their style or phase, you: from back then. It's priceless, and wonderful to look back on, not just read.
- Community: Learns that their input on site is valued, because they're not just a forum's member with an avatar but a living contributor to a community of others like them. Members can easily refer to prior graphics that were valued as defaults. (Even facebook keeps old profile defaults in an album)
- Visitor: The confusion of multiple users may actually be a benefit, as the community may seem more broad.

*There should come a setting* that prevents an avatar and signature change for a specified amount of days/hours. It would get too messy to default this setting to anything less than a week or two. Users now can change avatars as much as they like, causing the same issue - while with this permission setting they would be restricted from doing so.

The flip side to confusing to some and looking buggy just means that the poster's identity is not like facebook. Communities not only show a username and avatar, but also: personal text, custom titles, icons, ranks, custom fields, and even member badges. Some communities choose to be like facebook, that's ok. Coming across a member's post with a different set of avatar and signature only enriches the page's content. I'm working backwards here, my personal theory on SEO is that quality is greater than quantity, and viewers can tell.

I don't see this feature useful at a big community such as this one. Altho it would take nothing away.. only add to the content. But this feature is especially a wonderful addition to smaller communities where the members are either familiar with each other without constant new members (such as posting for support), or for members who center around art within the community such as graphic showcases and battles. The distinction between one community that would enjoy this and one that would not, is simply the community's focus and subjects.

I strongly believe that many communities would love to have this feature, or at least a simple mod of it.

Other forums have tried this.

Would you know how they accomplished this?

[Arantor]

I know exactly how they accomplished this, and they all removed it afterwards because people complained "why does it still have my old avatar"

I get your theory of the time capsule but many years of being both a forum user and forum admin tend to disagree with the premise. This was just as true before Facebook as it is now.

People simply do not interact with forums how you think they do, whether the community is a few dozen or hundreds of thousands - they tend to see the avatar first and will use that to help decide if the post is interesting or not, to the point where if they see a certain avatar they'll just skip the post.

[Kindred]

It would be a pain to code this...  you'd have to store the previous data and also recode the message display to pick the correct one...   it's not a minor bit of coding and has a limited benefit and a serious detriment, in 99% of the cases that I can imagine

[profzelonka]

Thanks for the insight.

If there is code floating around somewhere from one of these "all" forums that have went back from this feature, I am very interested in trying it out for one of my communities. Believe it or not, this is the most requested feature from 2 creative communities I run.

[Arantor]

Discourse tried it for a while, though they don't use PHP or MySQL so whatever will be there will be of minimal use.

I believe other newer forums have tried it too but they've all ended up reverting to the classical behaviour owing to use complaints.

Speaking as someone who does software development professionally, it has been my experience for many years that users usually know what they think they want, and rarely does it match up to what they actually need as tools.

[landyvlad]

it has been my experience for many years that users usually know what they think they want, and rarely does it match up to what they actually need as tools.

Doesn't just apply to forums or computers either - the world is full of that !