Animation Source Forums

Recently, I've been seeing the forums constantly being cluttered up by a number of things. They can disrupt the screen, a post or simply make things look untidy. I'm not going to point any fingers at anyone, but I've seen the following a lot lately:

Smilies - I think that the wolf smilies are very cute, but do people really have to put around three or four on every line they write? Two or three are fine in a post, depending on how long it is. But having ten smilies in a three-line post is really not necessary, since I've seen some that have no relevance to what the member is posting. The smilies also make the post look scruffy and untidy, as well as somewhat difficult to read. I thought smilies were for portraying what you're feeling right now, not making your post look 'cool' or 'charismatic.' This isn't MSN, when you can place as many smilies as you want. Too many smilies can distract other posters and could sometimes be considered as spam, especially if they have no place in your post.

Big writing - I've seen posts where all the writing is huge and in sometimes in a different colour. Often, they are saying something rather unpleasant that many people really do not want to hear about. Really, why is this necessary? It's not like we're all incredibly short-sighted is it? I think that some members use enormous fonts to make their post say 'I'm so great and I'm always right so don't flame me.' It doesn't make you look great at all. It makes you look whiny, childish and in-your-face. You're probably more likely to be flamed if you do use huge writing to make your unpleasant opinion clear.
And sometimes, I see it being used even when it is not being used to prove an unpleasant point. It's used in posts that say 'My favourite is...' or 'I feel so sorry for...' Why? Is the regular font not good enough? People are most likely to read your post anyway, so you won't have any problems getting noticed. It's unnecessary, and wastes space.

Signatures - they're supposed to be a small picture at the bottom of your post. So how come from time to time I see signatures that are three times bigger than the actual post itself? It disrupts the screen, and like the smilies, it makes to post itself somewhat hard to read. Like the big writing and the smilies, I think that it is used to make someone noticed more. It's fine to make yourself noticed, but you can do that by making posts that contribute to the topic politely and neatly. You will get noticed with a huge signature, but not in a good way.

So please, if you want to get noticed or look 'cool,' there's better ways than using ten thousands smilies, gigantic fonts or whale-sized signatures. For example, you could:

* Make yourself a neat little signature or avatar, just so long as it's quite small.
* Write neatly and in a way that contributes to the topic
* Using large fonts only when you want to make something uncontroversial clear (e.g. 'I think Universal should understand that we are not asking for a new Balto sequel.)
*Using smilies only to portray your feelings, and not to make your post distract people.

So, please consider the above the next time you post. These forums should stay neat and tidy and do not deserve to be cluttered up just because someone wants to be noticed and/or look 'cool.'

Very well put Canis,I've also seen people with big sigs.

Quoted for truth.

There are rules for all the things you list, but people usually don't listen to them...
The only way is for mods to warn the users when there's something wrong. And everyone can use the 'report' button to help them.

Steet, you've given me something else to rant about now. People don't read the rules, and look where it gets them.

ive seen many with big old long*tall* sigs that are like avater shpaed, they are longer in height than length, those arent even sigs, sigs are longer in width not height generally.

I agree too.

It's not so bad when people are making average size posts more than just one sentence long but even small sigs look big compared to some posts, personally I like medium size sigs, like the size of the one I have, 500*100 it doesn't look overly huge compared to posts and still gets my message across XD. That way also leaves space underneath for advertising purposes (like the BS trip link I have now) or for small banners or phrases.
My avatar is 150*150 which is the largest aloud and that's mainly because it's fuzzy any smaller and I love it.
Smilies get on my nerves when people use too many, 1 smilie is quite enough to express an opinion. I especially hate it when people make posts saying they like something that go along the lines of "OMFG!!! I like totally love that!!!(10-odd smilies)" < See, no more than 1 needed, you get what I feel about it.

Ya kno0w what i Also hate... with every sentence they begin the sentence with just one word and never change the first word. Like this one girl/guy said this

Although i like fun although i like Balto Although i like to have fun

and so on