While I understand the need to minimize bandwidth constraints, I think the new 6 kilobyte limit on avatar sizes is too strict. I am curious as to what the rest of Hydrogenaudio's membership thinks about this.

Personally, I think a compromise of some kind would be the best way to go. 10 kilobytes (or something close to that) sounds like a reasonable limit to me.

Opinions?

Where's the "I don't care either way, as I don't have an avatar." option?

Anyway, I do understand why it's done and avatar's don't really serve any purpose other than making it easy to find a certain member's post if flipping through a thread... Why slow the page downloading speed just for that?

Besides, it's not as if people sit and stare at avatars all day, so they don't really need to be top quality anyway.

I generally understand and support the need for HA to manage the service they provide, and if avatars were "getting out of hand" then this definitely needs to be controlled. I do think that 6KB is pretty small, though. Maybe 10KB, instead?

And I'm not sure why off-site links are not desirable...it would seem to me this would be more desirable from an adminitrative standpoint, as there is no server space taken except for the URL, and even my slow 56K connection has never had problems with any avatar I've seen, even my own bloated examples. Maybe there is a bandwidth issue on HA's side I'm not understanding?

Anyway, Angelina is getting pretty claustrophobic at 3x4 pixels. I'll use a larger avatar after a final decision is made. (Though it'll have to be a different pic, because she's totally nude. (w00t) )


edit:Oh, I voted for "compromise" between old rules and the currently proposed changes.

Send it to me!!!!

Edit: The large version, of course :B

As far as I am concerned I think avatars and signatures should be disabled: there are just a waste of bandwidth and browser space, and IMHO they rank just below banner ads.

Users that are annoyed with avatars and sigs can disable them at the control panel.

Good point. I should have included an "I don't care" or "No opinion" option.

If a moderator or administrator would like to add that, by all means.

Hrn... I was surprised to see things were as close as they are. From the sounds of things in the other thread, the change was disliked more-or-less unilaterally. I'd support a compromise, depending on what it was. There's my oft-requested (in the other thread, albeit) .SWF support, for which I've yet to get any responses.

We've also yet to hear from the admins/mods responsible for this about it. Care to comment, guys?

Size limit changed to 8 KB. This is as far as we can go. Heck, i was initially for 10 KB, while others rooted for 5 KB... but there you go. Thread closed, no more polls on this matter please.


edit:


SWF is already allowed