Smileys for the 2015 forum

[Simon]

Hi,

thanks for the ton of feedback. I'll be away over the weekend, but I'll comment now.

These smileys are completely useless. It's nonsense to have smileys without a mouth.

Smiling is done with the entire face, right? The mouth will help still.

The best idea is to redraw them all to something more appropriate.

Yes!

Some smileys in the current differ only by 3 or 4 pixels. This is horrible to distinguish. This is not how you should do graphical emoticons.

As said in the IRC quote, a smiley should exaggerate. It needn't look realistic.

is fine, and I hate the proposed replacement.

Hatred noted, but I can't do much without understanding your reason.

seems not fine due to reasoning above, only 4 interesting pixels, hard to distinguish.

huge eyes is closer to which I like the way it is.

The latter is okay because of the entirely different color. Didn't feel like huge-eyes is closer to that, but thanks for the input.

addition would definitely be better than a replacement due to different preferences here.

Design intuition is to scrap the redundancy, but I fear we'd step on too many toes, hmm.

<NaOH> cartoonishness is a relative scale
<NaOH> the other smileys are relatively mellow.

Yes, the other smileys can be made better. Having proposed this, it's now my duty to try making some. :> Otherwise I'll get BradLee'd. Will look into it next week.

The other proposed one with slightly narrower eyes doesn't really look as shocked to me

I feel the same.

I'd recommend the admins not to change any existing smileys yet. At most, add the Clam. Let's see whether I produce something interesting next week. I suck at drawing, but I believe it's still enough to improve the current smileys. :>

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

At most, add the Clam.

Done. 

Also, Leo now has the option to set his profile to use other sets of smilies (ie. when he applies the settings change to his profile, it will change the smilies he sees with his login, no one else is affected unless they change their settings also)...except like half the smilies in our default lemmings-based set will be missing (no graphics exist for them) in the other alternate sets that came built-in to the forum.  But given how much he seems to hate the current set maybe he'd consider that an improvement, until someone provides an actual full alternate set for me to upload.

[edit: updated bbcode from :clam: to :8(): , although we can vote on this pointless implementation detail if desired]

[Clam]

I'm happy as a clam!

[ccexplore]

Some smileys in the current differ only by 3 or 4 pixels. This is horrible to distinguish.

Speaking of horrible to distinguish, what's up with :XD: () vs :dead: ()?  The actual files are not byte-for-byte identical but the graphics sure look very similar?  Are they mean to be the same (just so you can use both bbcodes) or are they supposed to be different? [edit: resolved]

[Prob Lem]

Typically, "XD" is meant to denote laughter. Having :XD: be a dead-looking emote here has always confused me (I always just use :D instead, for the intended meaning).

[ccexplore]

Typically, "XD" is meant to denote laughter. Having :XD: be a dead-looking emote here has always confused me (I always just use :D instead, for the intended meaning).

Interesting.

Anyway, I did a quick forum search and found no real hits for the :dead: smiley bbcode, unlike :XD:.  I now suspect maybe I accidentally un-hid it when I was messing around with the admin controls for smileys yesterday.  I've removed it now from the list of available smileys since it appears for all intents and purposes to be a duplicate of :XD:.

P.S. Thanks for reminding me how to selectively make the bbcode for a smiley to display literally without turning off smileys for the entire post.

[ccexplore]

Perhaps a compromise and have all 3 variations?

:o => (tooltip: "mildly surprised")
:0 => (tooltip: "shocked")
:O => (tooltip: "mind blown")

 

[NaOH]

Mindless has created an additional complete set of lix emoticons -- with mouths! -- of which I wholeheartedly approve.

Seriously these are adorable. I vote they be added in as a secondary set of emoticons.

[Wafflem]

Perhaps a compromise and have all 3 variations?

:o => (tooltip: "mildly surprised")
:0 => (tooltip: "shocked")
:O => (tooltip: "mind blown")

 

Best compromise. The specifications of each surprised smiley are far more accurate than before. They should all be kept.

Mindless has created an additional complete set of lix emoticons -- with mouths! -- of which I wholeheartedly approve.

Seriously these are adorable. I vote they be added in as a secondary set of emoticons.

Although I haven't played Lix that much, the forum needs some more Lix emoticons, and these are well-done.

[namida]

It's completely possible to have seperate sets (a "Lemmings" set and a "Lix" set) and let users choose which one they prefer, if anyone likes this idea.

[NaOH]

It's completely possible to have seperate sets (a "Lemmings" set and a "Lix" set) and let users choose which one they prefer, if anyone likes this idea.

Since emoticons convey emotions, the small nuances of the emoticon used are very important. Therefore, it's important to have control over what others see when posting an emoticon. The subtle difference between  and  (or  and  ) might be small emotionally, but the difference is there. So it doesn't really make sense for one user to see only  and another user to see only  .

As an extreme example, suppose we changed the  XD emoticon from  to something more indicative of laughter (and less of a dead lemming). Suddenly, a lot of posts will read very differently.

All-in-all, I think it's better to let the poster choose the emoticon style than the reader. I suppose, of course, if the reader is determined to see one particular style of emoticon only, they're free to set that profile parameter.

[namida]

It should be possible, with a little bit of admin magic, to have a setup along the lines of:

Option a. Poster posts, eg, ":)". This shows up as a Lemming smiley or a Lix smiley depending on the reader's preference.
Option b. Poster posts, eg, ":lem)". This shows up as a Lemming no matter what.
Option c. Poster posts, eg, ":lix)". This shows up as a Lix no matter what.

(Perhaps even a fourth one to show up as the opposite of what the reader has set. xD And preferably with better shorcuts than those ones I used as examples.)

[Simon]

Nnnn, nah, no. NaOH has the reason right, I feel the emoticons differ.

The is a difference between and . Both show happinness, but connotes freedom from cumbersome tradition. Maybe it's like the difference of :-) and Guyperfect's persistent (-:.

-- Simon

[Leo]

The is a difference between and . Both show happinness,

I must say (and try to not 'insult' anybody with this fact, like ccexplore said i did) they don't show anything. Isn't that obvious? Both are just a face without any expression.

[NaOH]

connotes freedom from cumbersome tradition.

This made me laugh.

The is a difference between and . Both show happinness,

I must say (and try to not 'insult' anybody with this fact, like ccexplore said i did) they don't show anything. Isn't that obvious? Both are just a face without any expression.

Actually, I totally agree. Neither of  and  is a smile so much as a blank expression. But looks happy to me regardless of the lack of mouth.

Here's a lem with Mindless' lix smile.

Jarring, but not hard to get used to. Kind of cute, actually.

Regardless of all these new smiley possibilities, I still feel it's more important to have consistency across all screens than to facilitate viewing one's preferred set of emoticons.

Edit: out of curiosity, would it be possible to save the smileys used by existing posts as-is and constrain all the changes we decide on strictly affect posts hereafter?