Proper forum support for posting pictures, gifs and videos. It's not the 90s anymore.

...then for the love of all things holy, please do NOT try skydiving.

A feature I wouldn't like?

Well for starters, a thread called "Guess What I'm Picking At".

How about:

* backward compatibility? :P

There are many things wrong with this forum, especially of late, but I really wouldn't want to see all of the old posts vanishing one day like the manually sorted libraries. I already disliked the older posts getting archived last time a change was made to the forums.

That being said, the greatest issue I see at the moment is the chaos caused by "&" and trying to put text, links and more links into the same line/paragraph (both are rather new developments and also messed up a lot of the older posts). And the seemingly random way in which line breaks are accepted or ignored, although that's a minor problem compared to the former. The other shortcomings I could actually continue to live with, personally.

Odd that. What makes a "bad user"? Somebody who regularly disagrees with you? Certainly, you don't get 4,000 rep by being a "bad user". Posting once per day, 365 days per year, would take you 10 years to get to that stage. Your "good users" would include you, no doubt.

A user who comes into a topic and argues that the topic shouldn't be discussed in the first place is a bad user. In particular, if somebody wants feedback on her character build or party selection, for example, a user who says something like "just play the game your way" or "any party can beat the game" (which isn't true in some games, actually) is being a bad user by trying to derail the conversation instead of contributing to it.

A good user, on the other hand, would be one who actually discusses the topic at hand (in my example, discussing what character builds and parties work well and which are fun to play).

(This isn't the only way to be a bad user. Harassing other users, for example, or posting spam, or posting racist/sexist/ableist/homohpobic/transphobic content is also bad behavior and should not be tolerated on a forum such as this one.)

Also, just a friendly reminder that the rep system has been abused to the point of being useless.

So, yeah, just as I said: somebody who regularly disagrees with you. For the record, you are one of THE worst offenders of going off-topic and not discussing the matter at hand. Pot-kettle-black.

Many users actually wound not want these features.

Pictures: These use up extra bandwidth (making the page load more slowly) and increase the amount of scrolling required. Also, some pictures are rather disgusting or obscene, which leads to another way to harass other users or make the experience of using the forum worse for everyone.

gifs: Now we add animation to the mix. Many users (including myself) just want to read the text without being distracted by animations on the screen. Even worse, some animations (particularly those with lots of flashing) can cause epileptic seizures in some people, providing another way for users to attack other users. (Case in point: One episode of the Pokémon animé, Electric Soldier Porygon, made the news for causing seizures in children. The episode was pulled from the air (and never aired overseas), but you should be able to find the fair use clip of the seizure inducing portion (which I will *not* link here for obvious reasons).)

Videos: Now we add audio. Having audio play automatically is one of the worst features a web site could ever have. Plus, audio can cause hearing damage (screamers, for example) or trigger audio related conditions like misophonia. There's also the issues of server space and bandwidth.

So no, I don't think these would be good features to add. Images can be posted as attachments, and if somebody wants to post a video, she can upload it to a video hosting site and link to it here.

Personally, I'd prefer this. We're no different than any other forum members: just lucky enough to get an invite that we were able to accept. That's all.

As to the thread itself, I think it's a great idea. Many of the things suggested are things we brought up in discussions ourselves, but there are bound to be other things we didn't think of. I'll personally try to make sure one of the GOG people see this thread.

Oh my God! You have to move your finger one time extra to reach the end of the page? How awful!

That's a moderation problem, not a "pictures" problem.

Distracted? Really? Are jingling keys and shiny objects a problem as well?


Less than 1% of the world population has epilepsy, and only around 3% of the people who have epilepsy get triggered by flashing lights, and even then it's only specific types of flashing lights, and that's assuming that anyone would even bother to post something that qualifies in the first place. There's probably less than 100 people in here. This is not a problem in this forum.

Also, really? You think people will use gifs as a weapon now?


Cool. I never said they should play automatically. Of course they shouldn't play automatically. I didn't even think that had to be specified. Also, do you wear earmuffs when you go outside to protect from the threat of loud noises?

That nobody uses as it is, and nobody clicks on them anyway, because it's impossible to know what sort of image will be attached, or video or website will be linked, so they don't trust enough, or bother enough, to click. Of course the videos would be posted to Youtube regardless, I just want to be able to be embedded. Like either the Barefoot Essentials or Adalia Fundamentals script has done in their endless struggle to make this forum not quite as terrible.

How about this? Me and everyone else who feels like it can start threads sharing funny pictures, or gameplay videos, or gifs of cute animals, or wallpapers, and we'll all enjoy ourselves; and you can just not take part of those threads? And just endure the, what? Maybe 5 pictures or gifs you'd run into for the whole month in random threads? Instead of saying the frankly negligible impact it would have on your forum experience would trump our enjoyment?

That actually *has* happened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/22/gif-counts-deadly-weapon-seizure-inducing-tweet-case-grand/

IN THIS FORUM

Where no one uses their real names. Where no one can google you and find out your medical history. With its tiny userbase you expect not only that there would be a person who would be susceptible to gif induced seizures, but that someone else would want to induce a seizure on someone else, and that the person they pick just so happens to be the one susceptible to it. It's a ridiculous proposition. For once, try to actually take context into your logic.

You are making some assumptions here. In particular, if you are going to make assumptions, you should make your assumptions as safe as possible. This means that it's better to assume there are people here who are susceptible to such seizures (in which case being wrong won't do significant harm) than to assume there aren't (in which case being wrong could result in somebody getting a seizure).

Also, a seizure-inducing gif could be posted in a popular topic, in which case the chance of catching somebody with a seizure increases dramatically.

Also, it's not true that no one uses their real names here. In particular, every now and then a developer will post, and said users are usually identified by their real names or an account name that they use elsewhere (often with their real names there).

(Sidenote: While we're on the topic of real names, it's worth noting that there are almost no assumptions that can be made about them.)

I could also point out that I am not the only user on this forum who would prefer not to have inline images.

Agree with most of the items, but I would like emoticons, pretty please? But yeah, no inline images for me.

I already contacted one of them but go ahead - the more the merrier.
Those seem to be a point with different opinions. At first I also wanted them since I usually don't post many sentences without ;) or :). Then I was told that people tend to overuse them as in posting 20 smileys in a row ect and I have to agree that such use of emoticons (maybe also animated ones) could harm the look of a forum a lot.