ORG's emoticons

[drone]

At some point in the past (prior to the vb4 upgrade maybe), each member could personalize the quick access smileys. We could select 20-25 of our favorites. Is this possible with the latest version of vB?

[TinCow]

At some point in the past (prior to the vb4 upgrade maybe), each member could personalize the quick access smileys. We could select 20-25 of our favorites. Is this possible with the latest version of vB?

Yeah, unfortunately that was a vB3 module which was never ported over to vB4.

[Peasant Phill]

Wouldn't categorizing smilies (as mentioned before) make it a lot easier?
Categories like shogun, holidays, emotions, ...

[TinCow]

They actually are categorized at the moment... just poorly. If someone wants to help figure out a new categorization/organization system, I'd be happy to implement it.

[Maltz]

Is the current system ranking smileys by their usage? It might be a way to get the more popular and useful ones bumped to the little window.

***

As the thread opener here is my honest thought.

I understand and fully respect the maturity to keep the smileys simple, varied, and not too visually distracting. Actually not a lot of people even use smileys in their discussions in many ORG's topics. It almost feels like that people think using too many smileys looks childish and purposely refrain from it. It is perfectly fine.

But since I just returned to the ORG after maybe 6 years of absence, I have noticed that how the "outside world" has been changing. The ORG's small smileys really look outdated today, although they did look superb and were the mainstream.

I also recognize that the ORG are currently mainly patronized by western users who in general equate cuteness to childish or feminine. But at least in East Asia, where more than 1.5 billion people live and start flocking to the internet, cuteness or gender neutral appearance is actually quite acceptable among males. When I walk in the malls in Osaka, Japan, 25% of men wears pink shirts. Movie stars often appear gender neutral. Maintaining a masculinity image is not very important in some cultures.

A great thing about the smileys is that it is optional. So I hope people are still open to the introduction of fancier systems - if you do not like them, you do not use them. Having some catchy or cute smileys attract mainly the younger fans, but these people will grow up to become the next generation of ORG primary contributors. And at that time they will talk like you do today.

In addition, cute emoticons are very useful in stories.

[TinCow]

They are currently ranked by my own fickle whims. There's no way to get them to auto-sort based on usage, so it's just a question of figuring out what to put where.

On a technical level, I don't see any reason why we couldn't just have more sets of smilies. Unless we were able to find a replacement for every single existing smiley, we'd have to keep the current ones anyway, otherwise old threads would have their smiley images broken. So, we could just add a new set of more 'modern' smilies to the existing one so that all options are available. Old fuddie-duddies could continue using the traditional ones, and those fancy new jive hepcats with their bellbottoms and their boogaloo could use the new fangled types.

[Andres]

Boogaloo?

What in Andres' name is "Boogaloo" ?

[frogbeastegg]

But since I just returned to the ORG after maybe 6 years of absence, I have noticed that how the "outside world" has been changing. The ORG's small smileys really look outdated today, although they did look superb and were the mainstream

Could you give links to some of the sites? Then we can take a look.

[Maltz]

onion heads.zip

Here is the "onion head" set that we talked about earlier - the full animated versions that I downloaded straight from another forum. There are also others around but I think this one is very representative. Please feel free to suggest others.

[Zim]

Are they really outdated? I can think of 5 different forums I've gone on from time to time in the last few years. All are quite big with a lot of posters. I believe 3 are newer than the Org. All but one are heavily populated by users in their teens. They all use the small yellow smilies, often with some additional sets that vary in appearance but still fit in more or less in size and style (like the Warhammer Ork smilies on dakkadakka). Oddly, only the one with the older base (where people in their twenties make up the bulk of the "younger" posters) has much in the way of smilies that are both higher in detail and much bigger than the little generic yellow guy.

I don't doubt there are forums that use entirely different types of smilies, but I'm not sure most people see a yellow one and think "old fashioned" either.

At any rate, no complaints about the new smilies, except maybe their size. Must admit I thought at first they were supposed to be that cat from the old Pokemon cartoon, not onions.

But since I just returned to the ORG after maybe 6 years of absence, I have noticed that how the "outside world" has been changing. The ORG's small smileys really look outdated today, although they did look superb and were the mainstream.

[frogbeastegg]

Nice work, Husar.

So, what do people think?

Must admit I thought at first they were supposed to be that cat from the old Pokemon cartoon, not onions.

Gasp! You mean Meowth!

Yes, I did play the original pokemon game to death, and watched the cartoon series when I came home from school. It's etched into my brain.