Emoji

Serah

Do the users here prefer forums with or without

😀 😁 😂 🤣 😃 😄 😅 😆 😉 😊 😋 😎 😍 😘 ?

Rahul Balaggan

I am indifferent

Serah

@rahul-balaggan well, the opinion of yours, who is here since almost the start, is most valuable.

I still left out that option from the poll, since everyone who feels indifferent about that would still be affected. 😅

If you think your forums experience is going to be more annoying seeing colourful emojis here and there, feel free to vote against it. 👍

If you think it would be nice to e.g. reduce frictions with posts, maybe it is something the @admin might want to consider for the sake of the moderator as well. 🤗

Timmaaah

I almost never use emoji's.
I would be more likely to use a gif than an emoji.

SomeOldGuy

I cannot vote either of the choices, because you included "smileys" in the No option.

Limited use of smileys that are readily recognized can help convey sarcasm and such. But the shear number of subtly-different "emojis" is ridiculous. Not to mention that rendering emoji is screwy at best. A site I administer accepts emojis, but... It displays them as full-page pictures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji also list other problems, such as while there are 1273 "official" Unicode emojis, a lot of them are subject to political interpretations (pistol, rifle, bomb). And a lot of people (I'm one of them) cannot figure out what a lot of them are supposed to mean. Some make sense blown up to page-filling size, but are ambiguous at "single character size". The "face with tears of joy" example on the Wikipedia page could look like a sad person crying when displayed smaller.

Plus I won't download special font files "just" to be able to "properly" display something that wouldn't be any more expressive than the "box with ones and zeros" that my browser displays now.

Shiny

Most of the forums I've been on, including those which I have run, had emojis. However, I kind of like not having them for a change. Smileys can be fun, but not having them gives the forum a more literary feel which seems appropriate.

Serah

@someoldguy well, yeah - no use in having these 😔 if you cannot see them. 😐

@Timmaaah you mean like those seen on Twitter? They are quite interesting, but I always think they would put a huge burden on the data usage - especially when you check the forums on mobile.

@Shiny I agree. I actually thought that is the main reason why the forums does not support it at all. Yet I got curious why I could not find via the search function any mention of that. Not that I care much, once I stop haunting the forums two days from now on. 😜

DoubleMangekyo

No. Every time I see someone use an emoji on a forum it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. I will never take anyone that ends their sentence/post with an emoji seriously.
That cancer should stay on cancer sites (twitter, facebook, etc.), not forums.

Serah

@doublemangekyo that makes me chuckle. You sound exactly like Aya, a person I know. She said exactly the same thing.

SomeOldGuy

@serah This site uses UTF-8 encoding, so the emojis are here whether anyone likes it or not.

Of the samples you posted in your original message, my browser can't display 2 of them, 5 of them look like slight variations on "big grin", and 1 could be interpreted as "cool" or "sneering blind person".

Raitoiro

No, although I don't really care is they're used, but I find them a bit too jarring. In my opinion the basic :( :) ;) ^^ are enough to express most of the meaning emojis are usually used for, and they blend better with the rest of the text.
Plus, I know it's stupid, but I have a hard time taking seriously anything which use more than 2 of them.