DSXchange

We've had a couple of requests lately for Avatars. When we opened the DSXchange we purposefully choose to disable Avatars for a couple of reasons:
<ol>
<li>Performance</li>
<li>Policing </li>
</ol>
In other words lots of pictures on a page will slow download time and we'd have to keep an eye out for inappropriate pics - though I doubt that would be much of a problem on this particular board. Anyway, what do you think?

I would like to keep the site lean and mean and very professional. I voted no, because the steak is what I care about, not the sizzle.

I take it that's a 'No', Ken? Maybe we can put together a 'lean, mean and very professional' Avatar for you.

In this day and age of high-speed Internet (which I know is not world-wide, but it is much more pervasive), I'm not sure 'slow download time' is really that big of an issue anymore. Besides, we're not talking about using embarassing pictures from Ascential World as Avatars... or at least *I* wasn't.

They could be restricted to the Profile page and not included in any postings. You could control the Avatars and give us some tasteful ones to choose from. Or you could forget the whole thing and remove the 'A' word from the Profile... if it hadn't been there, I probably wouldn't have asked about them in the first place, even if they are pretty standard fare out there in the wild.

Still think it would be cool, but yes it would add another level of overhead for those policing and managing this site, so I would understand if this never materializes.

I just voted "no", but agrees with Craig when he says that...

Craig wrote:They could be restricted to the Profile page and not included in any postings. You could control the Avatars and give us some tasteful ones to choose from.[...] it would be cool

Without the question of the bandwith (although i must confess a 56k home modem, at work i rarely seen a "less-than-T1" bandwith), pictures on the side of threads just could look a lot less "professional" and are disturbing, for the readers and for the layout (pics with large height just could make never-ending pages)...