For the second time now you seem to insinuate that anyone who has disagreed with the idea of adding avatars etc is doing so because of some hidden agenda. I think this is a rather unfair accusation.

What's wrong with personal opinions? I thought virtually every post in this thread and the different stands on this issue represented nothing but personal opinions of the individual posters...

Unfortunately, that's not how TB works, and if it did, I can imagine a number of complaints about how moderators get sooo much say in the process. Just as TB doesn't have any say over moderation, so moderators do not get any special say over TB issues - it's up to individual TB members to decide how much weight to assign to moderator's concerns on an issue. And we've seen in this thread that some TB members don't think moderator's concerns have any validity, whereas others do. And before someone mentions that there are moderators who are also TB members - I will and have taken the position that moderator concerns are outweighed by benefits to the board on some issues. And I'll do it again in the future, should I feel the situation warrants it. I don't feel that this situation warrants it. I see little unanimity from those pushing avatars (since some of you want photos, and some of you want anything you like so long as it isn't personal photos), so I'm not even sure that someone could come up with a cohesive motion to represent the pro-avatar position!

We also do have a process for these things. I'm sure as soon as we get some other stuff sorted out, someone will take this onto the TB private forums for discussion on there, which is a necessary first step in that process.

I may come at this from the same angle as wharvey because of working in a similar "imaging dependent" industry (or that might just be a coincidence), but I'm in favor of supporting additional "image content" on FlyerTalk provided a couple of things:

1. That we can find a way to do it that does not create an additional burden on moderators who are already overburdened.

2. That animation and extraneous content not be allowed. (I'm on a couple of sites where annoying blinkies and counters and all sorts of things are allowed - imagine how cluttered it would be if we could have a blinkie for every program we have status in and a counter for every upcoming trip - some of us would have one post take an entire page!)

3. That there be some kind of limit on how much content a user can put in their profile (same vein as #2).


Going back to the imaging thing, I'll go ahead and put my bias out on the table - one of my companies is in the photo/imaging industry. Because of that (or maybe "in addition to that") I'm a big believer that a picture says a thousand words. They illustrate trip reports in a way that mere words can't. They can convey emotion. And they give a certain perspective into a poster (whether its a photo of that person or just a favorite travel landscape they choose). I think they are very much where the internet is going (blogs, MySpace, Facebook, etc.) as far as network building.

I'm all for FlyerTalk staying on the cutting edge provided that we don't destroy the readability of the site with too much clutter - and provided we do not create more hours of work for our volunteer moderators.

Embedded photographs are allowed in the Trip Reports forum. They don't seem to be heavily used, for some reason.

Spiff writes:

On what evidence, Spiff, do you base that opinion?

Here are the facts that lead me to believe that this assumption is inaccurate:

1. Mikel has advised that, to his knowledge, there has never been a need to edit a photo uploaded to the FlyerTalk Photo Gallery.

2. The moderators of the only FT image content forum that I know about-- Trip Reports--have advised that they have had no problem with any FlyerTalker uploading an inappropriate image. To be perfectly accurate, one moderator reported that once, a couple of years ago, he did request that one FlyerTalker separate his Trip Report photos from the other photos in his album which may have contained some questionable images. That FlyerTalker complied without any issue.

3. Every large bulletin board that I have checked at big-boards.com (and I freely admit that I haven't had time to check all 2,000 of them) allows avatars and pictures. That fact would lead me to believe that images are both very much the wave of the future (even the present) and highly popular among internet users. If a board with over a billion posts can manage images, I suspect we can too--we are pretty smart cookies.

Randy has indicated that his personal preference would be to see FlyerTalk with a Wall Street Journal face, much like www.fodors.com or conde nast travel, neither of which appear to even rank on big-boards.com and the good news is that we could easily satisfy his personal desire by setting the default on FlyerTalk to the "image free" mode, and still allow the highly-popular images that the modern users of large internet boards appear to demand.

Birdstrike queries:

One of which I am aware, is cruisecritic.com which is a cruise related board, considerably larger than FlyerTalk. Like on FlyerTalk, these posters tend to meet one another in real life during their travels, making personal photos very helpful in identifying one another. I have had numerous folks on cruise ships identify me because of my photo on that site, and those "identifications" have led to some very pleasant personal interactions. Interestingly, I would guess that the average age of these very modern posters is 50+.

I would say that is a good thing. Flyertalk has a bit more class than the Rooster Teeth webcomic community (#25). Which of the top 25 big-boards do you suggest best represents the FlyerTalk community goals?

Once again, bigger it not a sign of better. That said, I took a look at cruisecritic.com. The avatars are tiny and generally tasteful, but offset by the garish countdown timers - what were they thinking?

A strong disbelief in the Honor System working in a community this large.

I've nuked quite a lot of spam in my tenure as a moderator, and I'm just one of a small volunteer group that often has a lot of ground to cover. Many FlyerTalkers do not see anywhere near the volume of spam that gets nuked here because we are pretty good at what we do.

If avatars are enabled, then not only do the moderators have to watch for text-based spam, we also now have to look for image-based spam or inappropriate images from spammers.

So, I'm sorry, but I feel quite strongly that adding graphics, in addition to causing more overhead to the IBB system that runs FlyerTalk, will very likely cause an increase in the workload for those who volunteer to help make the FlyerTalk experience enjoyable for all. Whether that workload increase would be too much or negligible compared to increased/decreased user enjoyment is another matter. You asked me on what I base my opinion that avatars will increase the burden of moderation. There's your answer.

Regarding avatars, I agree with Spiff's comments that members don't see the majority of stuff that mods do in the background. When I was a moderator, there were so many deleted posts & spammers that I could see because of my access rights. Now that I'm no longer a moderator, my user experience is totally different as it almost appears that we never have spammers and the board flows so smoothly. I know that this isn't the case & I'm sure that this week alone, the mods removed spammers & cleaned up lots of things - it's part of the maintentance that they do on FlyerTalk to improve the experience.

Here's an example of a forum where some of the avatars wouldn't necessarily be acceptable for FT - http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/index.php - however, they also have forum topics that aren't necessarily acceptable for FT...

That said, I'm not opposed to the avatar idea completely - though I do agree with the above comments that are not in favor of animations.

Personally, I would be looking for a rather more reasoned type of argument than "plenty of people do it, so we should do it too" (you know, lemmings and all that...).
I think that Randy has admirably summed up what, independently of the moderation issues, some of us think. Is FT's aim to be the biggest and brashest of them all or does it aim at a more sophisticated and understated style? If the former, yes by all means let us go for avatars galore whatever the implications for mods. If the latter, it seems to me that the case still needs to be made since, as far as I can see, nobody has identified a need that cannot be fulfilled by a photogallery or, at a push, optional images in profiles.
References to myspace, facebook, etc... are neither here nor there as these sites serve wholly different purposes to FT. I just don't get the appeal of the "we want to be exactly just like any other site" arguments. I like FT precisely because it is NOT just like any other site.

And assuming that we enabled it for all forums, I don't think we would see heavy use... but I still can see a valid reason for allowing it. Take for example the introduction of a new style of seat on a particular airline. I know when this happened on AA we had pages and pages of people trying to describe (sometimes inaccurately) what the new seats were like - and then eventually links taking people away from FT to see the seats posted elsewhere. Wouldn't it enhance the FT experience to be able to see those photos here on FT - and for the IB perspective, it would keep the clicks on FT (generating ad revenue for our community) vs. driving traffic/content elsewhere.

Since images are enabled in the Trip Reports and Travel Photography forums, could we get some statistics on the number of image-based spam messages that have had to be deleted there (vs. the number of text-based spam messages in that same forum)?

If we have good data to suggest that this is already causing a problem that could be widely spread, I'll reconsider my position.

I disagree. I find inline photos on sites like, eg, sqtalk, distracting and interfering with the flow. It seems to me that you are underestimating the temptation of posting 15 photos of airline XX lounge at ZZZ or the new livery of airline YY or the arrival of the new Airbus A380 in the fleet of airline UU, etc... Fters who feel compelled to share photos can do it very easily by posting a link to a photosharing site or a blog.

Perhaps the moderators of those forums will want to weigh in here.

I would throw in here the analogy of signatures. The Mods have to enforce the TOS which says no commercial signatures. That is the only enforceable TOS for signatures, yet signatures still cause plenty of problems, complaints and feelings, despite the fact that users can elect to turn off signatures. Spammers are getting much more subtle - we've had some real issues with innocuous looking signatures, but which were really just nothing more than spam that the member was freely posting around the board because it was in his signature!

We get complaints from members about what are said in signatures or how irritating some members find them, despite the fact that members don't have to view signatures. And of course, then there are the members who chose to send messages in their signatures...

And that's just from a couple of lines of text - they do say a picture paints a thousand words!

So when it's argued that avatars won't cause any problems - I look at the problems which signatures cause and just laugh. But of course, unless you are or have been a mod, you are generally blissfully unaware of all this additional work going on behind the scenes to ensure that your viewing experience is as enjoyable as possible.

As stated above, I have already checked with Mikel regarding the photo gallery, and with both moderators of the Trip Reports forum, and they have all reported that they have experienced no problems with FlyerTalks posting inappropriate pictures.

To my knowledge they were the only FlyerTalk moderators who have had any experience with images. I iwll also check with the moderators of the Travel Photography forum, if I can ever find it. Where is it?