I was curious if there was ever a discussion on implementing a limit to the number of emoticons a person can use in a single post. It isn't a major problem or anything, but when I see a post with 20 crying faces, face smashes, and various other emoticons I usually ignore the post. Maybe I'm the only one it bothers, but using a couple is alright, but using a ton of them seriously detracts from the post to me. I get too distracted by them (especially moving ones) to get through the post.
Then again, I am also distracted by shiny thi...oh, squirrel!
SCJA
When I die, I want people to look at me and say "Yeah, he might have been crazy, but that was one zarkin frood that knew where his towel was."
Maybe when somebody is typing something in and they go for the tenth emoticon, there can be a pop up that says "Hey buddy, maybe you should slow down --- bartender". If the user keeps using them, there could be more messages like that. And finally a cutoff at 20.
It doesn't seem to me like this is much of a problem. But if a limit were imposed, it would be better implemented in terms of the ratio of emoticons to characters. Ten smilies isn't bad if they're spread across many paragraphs. But if they're all in one short paragraph, or one line, it's a bit much.
I was once an admin on a message board that had a limit - I think it was 6 smilies total. Very annoying for those of us who sometimes make long posts. I increased the smiley limit several times, ending at 20 I think.
Actually I think the larger animated smilies should count against you more than the small static ones. Things like are OK in moderation, but they grow annoying a lot sooner than or - in my opinion, of course.
Still, I think Jeanne's suggestion is best here.
Vikas Kapoor
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Joined: Aug 16, 2007
Posts: 1374
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Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Or we could point it out when we see it. I haven't noticed this too frequently.
In ancient times, there was indeed a problem with this here, so bad that a limit was hacked into the Perl code of UBB. I guess when we moved to JForum, we lost the limit, unintentionally. I agree that this really doesn't seem to be much of a problem here nowadays.
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are OK in moderation, but they grow annoying a lot sooner than 
or 
- in my opinion, of course.
