Well, if something like this already exists and have fallen into disuse, then perhaps it indicates there wasn't a very strong community need for it? At the same time, if it already exists and just needs to be better organized, perhaps that is the solution. It would meet the needs of those who want to match a photo to a name/handle, and it would be unobtrusive to those who aren't interested.

I actually like NOT knowing some characteristics of posters - whether someone is male or female, older or younger than me, etc etc.

Aside from the satisfaction I might glean from the occasional "OMG, he really IS a blonde!" I like leaving it up to individuals to decide what to tell about themselves, or I can go to a DO and meet a whole bunch of them.

And, as has been said, people can link to as much info about themselves as they wish in their profiles.

I'm not that keen on flags, either, and for similar reasons. And should my flag show my citizenship (dual citizenship?), my long-term residence, my current location? We already have the ability to display location..... ?

However, I do agree that a couple of the smilies could be improved. The embarassed one never really looks embarassed to me! But I don't want a whole bunch more in number, maybe just a slight improvement.

I see that 118 out of our current 155,943 strong membership have so far elected to share their mugshot on the FT photo gallery. Not a particular accurate representation but the order of magnitude stands very strong against the potential success of personal ID photo avators. I have doubts that many individuals would be keen on sharing their identity in such a direct manner on a public forum.

If the problem is with the mechanics of the FT photo page, perhaps our attention would be better spent improving the way the members photo gallery is organised and making it more accessible.

Did you actually find the old photo gallery, prospero? Where is it? All I can find is the current Photo Gallery which you get by clicking "Extras" and the old original gallery photos don't appear to be there. I may have missed them, but I have looked.

Of course, there will always be only a very small percentage of members who participate in any activity, whether it be elections, parties, or photos, but that is true of most BBs. I sometimes check the number of posts for the Today's Birthdays folks (about as random a sampling as you could find) and by far the vast majority of folks have only a handful of posts and really aren't an active part of the community, so, of course, they would probably not post a photo anywhere.

The photos, no matter where or how they are posted, would exist for those who do like to go to the parties and do want to get to know one another better, not for that vast majority that really doesn't much participate in any aspect of the board.

So what's wrong with the current photo gallery? And doesn't Prospero's suggestion seem the rational thing to do?

If Kyla Ebbert ever joins FT, we already know what she looks like.

If you really want to show FTers what you look like, you can put the link to the photo gallery in your sig or profile, can't you?

Let's say we eventually do flags. Then my suggestion would be to allow the member to fly whatever flag s/he desired. Maybe it's where they were born or where they live or a favorite place or whatever.

And on the smilie issue, I'd like to refer to the quote yesterday from alanw in case it was overlooked:

The smilies in his link are, IMO, a distinct improvement over what we currently have. And yet they're not distracting or particularly controversial.
They're basically a modernizing face-lift of our current smilies with the addition of a few extra ones. The size would, of course, remain the same as what we currently use.

There are many rational suggestions and all have their pros and cons.

I think it would be great to have an alphabetical member's ID photo gallery where each member had the option of posting a photo of him or herself for purposes identification purposes. I think it would be great to have the option of posting a photo in one's profile. I think it would be great to have the option of having head shot avatars, more smilies, new smilies,country flags, affinity icons, and, even more important, I think it would be great have a button to turn all features off.

At this point there aren't even any motions on the table. Heck at this point, for me the TalkBoard forum is still "read only" and I am just throwing out suggestions to stimulate discussion so I will have a better feel for the feelings of the general membership, which I guess is my new volunteer job.

Decisions that affect one's ability to moderate effectively are not reducible to mere personal preference. Effective moderation requires time -- loads of it, actually. Decisions that affect what a moderator must attend to must also take in account that a moderator's time is not a bottomless well. Additional work -- or community enhancements, if you like -- means that either some things we'll have to let slide or additional moderators will be needed. Training new mods also takes time. The bottom line is that a cost will be incurred no matter how incidental a proposed change seems on the face of it.

Let's make sure the antecedent notion is a truly desirable before fussing so much over the consequent. The burden now to show is how (even optional) mug shots under posters' handles are an enhancement to our community.

As long as all members are entitled to exercise this option at their discretion ...

I hope there's no failure to appreciate the adversarial position that sometimes puts mods in.

What precisely is the proposal about smilies (and avs and flags) options then? Are they discretionary viewing for general members but not for mods?

Then is the suggestion that, to avoid problems of subjectivity, head shots posted on FT are restricted to those issued on ones DLs and passports, or as close to that standard as possible? Somehow, I don't think there'll be universal agreement about what an acceptable head is, even among reasonable people (who, as we all know, can have reasonable disagreements).

An ideal standard, but often vaguely rendered in reality.

Yes, there is! The Flyertalk Gallery was instituted precisely for the purpose of setting face to handle in an unobtrusive way. Let's bring it back! Excellent project for the right person(s).

Big if. Why don't we wait until the TB passes such a motion before applying the analogy to the moderation team?

The Photo Gallery is under the Extras menu located at the top of every FT page. Here's the link:

http://gallery.flyertalk.com/gallery/

It includes the "old picture gallery" you are looking for, as evidenced by the 4th item down on Page One,

... which displays a photo thusly captioned: "Wingless, Gisela, and Rudi at the Halekulani during the PIP 1999 (Viewed: 47 times.)" Also, the old Members Gallery was rolled into that. A simple search on "Punki" or "essxjay" will reveal the mugs shots each posted back in 1998. IIRC, the explicit purpose for the Member's Gallery was because "it would be great to have [a] photo gallery where each member had the option of posting a photo of him or herself for purposes identification purposes." If now you want it alphabetized or better organized, that's simple enough to achieve.

And rather than let this near-decade old gem languish, why not resurrect and polish it up a bit? If the standard is to be "All to the good of Flyertalk," then would such a project not be a contribution to that end? Asking technical questions about how to achieve this is certainly allowed (in the Techincal Issues forum).

Yes, you can.

Understood, alan. So far, avs, sigs and smilies are not mandatory to use or view, and vB indeed has separate viewing options built in for each item. But a TB member has implied that for certain members, the built in options should not be optional!

A more complete set of smilies should make moderation slightly easier by reducing misinterpretation of posts.

Avatars are virtually guaranteed to add to moderator workloads.

Actually, essxjay, I was referring to the original identification photo gallery. You remember the one with the stick man figure of my boyfriend arturo. That was very useful, and reinventing an alphabetical photo gallery of that type could very well serve the community.

nsx , do you have any speficic suggestions?

These vbulletin smilies are superb, IMHO.

You don't think that some of them are a little, um....over the top for FT's PG-environment?

Yeah, but very few people have the brass to actually use them. In fact most of them I've never seen used. I'm pretty sure we can pick any subset we like.

Seriously!?

Looking at that list, one does wonder quite how FT seems to have managed so far without "smilies" for some of these

To call some of these offensive, would be a serious understatement. Mind you, seeing these used by posters, might just acheive the target of "go a long way toward helping us know, remember and understand one another better" a lot faster.