Avatar Man!

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Avatar Man!

Harvey
Hey Avatar Man has a new haircut and a more defined look!



But he looks more like a guy now.

Give the women a choice?

Hate to do that because I like the motivation for people to upload real avatars but... it might makes sense.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
Harvey44 wrote
Hey Avatar Man has a new haircut and a more defined look!
Yes, we have decided to improve the look of that icon.
Harvey44 wrote
But he looks more like a guy now.

Give the women a choice?

Hate to do that because I like the motivation for people to upload real avatars but... it might makes sense.
It is hard to create a nice image that can generically represent a human being (mainly in the world we live now). So I think people should change their avatar if they don't feel confortable with the current image.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Harvey
Understood.

I was thinking maybe add a generic female one too and give people a choice.  But like I said, I really want people to have avatars.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Harvey
Would really like a generic female avatar.

Ski forums are dominated by males in general. Ours has maybe 20% female which is actually very high compared to others.

I would really like women to be able to identify themselves as women even if they don't want to upload an avatar.

What do you think?
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
Is anyone really complaining about this? I wonder why they don't upload a picture or any image they identify themselves with. The generic avatar is just a placeholder. Users should upload images if they don't like the placeholder. What am I missing?
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Re: Avatar Man!

Harvey
Hugo <Nabble> wrote
Is anyone really complaining about this? I wonder why they don't upload a picture or any image they identify themselves with. The generic avatar is just a placeholder. Users should upload images if they don't like the placeholder. What am I missing?
Nobody is complaining.  This is something that I think would help me achieve my goals.

I was hoping to avoid explaining this because it's going to sound odd and full of generalizations about the sexes. But...

Like I said, ski forums are dominated by men. Boys really, but older boys.  The environment can at times get contentious and for lack of a better phrase "testosterone fueled."  

This builds on itself.  When men dominate the discussion, women will lurk, but won't join, or sometimes they join and don't post.  Generalization: The more women you have the more civilized things are.

I've got 400 members and maybe 50 are women and maybe 10 of those post regularly.  This is a many compared to most ski forums which have NO women.  I've  worked hard to make it a safe fun place for women.

Today something happened that has happened 4 times before - over 2 years that's not a huge amount. One notoriously harsh poster criticized something a new member said. It was mean really.  It turns out the criticized poster was a women - very young. She deleted all of her posts and quit.

I can't just ban every guy who is harsh. I've learned that the more you MODERATE the more trouble you get in.  I sent this guy an email and asked him to back off. He said if he'd know she was a woman he never would have "kidded" her for her "stupid" comment.  He is also a valuable contributor most of the time.

Her screenname was just initials and until she quit there was no way to tell she was a woman.

I realize that this isn't really a problem with the software but human nature.   Still anytime software can make my life easier, I'm interested.

I realize to that giving people the option of two generic avatars may decrease the chance that they will upload an avatar. Maybe a radio button where you choose male or female?

One last point. I don't want to make our forum sound terrible. It is known as one of the most civilized ski forums out there. With many members conflict can arise.

If this is a real big job , then I won't bring it up until it happens again.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
I see your point, Harvey. Now I believe this could have value to forums.

I was looking at the code and this is not an easy task at this point. The code that handles the default avatar is still in java, so it cannot be easily customized with NAML by individual site owners. We don't see much hope for that code, but there is still a light at the end of the tunnel.

Since NAML is not as intuitive as we would like, we have decided to fix that problem with a cleaner solution. Right now we are in the process of re-writing everything with new technology (including HTML5) and with a new language (based on Lua). We need several months to get the new Nabble ready, but the good news is that we will address issues requested by our users in the last years. Changing the default avatar will be easy and I believe we can even include the male/female option by default to all forums. Can we move your request to some months in the future, where the new Nabble can handle it smoothly?

This is the first time we talk to users about such plans. We are very excited about that, but we still have a lot of work ahead. Please let me know if you have questions.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Harvey
I can certainly wait.

I love the idea of going to HTML 5. For my own purposes I'd like any dramatic change to happen over the summer during our slow time.

I also like anything that will cleanup and minimize code, improving speed.

Does this new code have potential to do that? I have this feeling that there is a lot of legacy code in my apps that could be eliminated.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
Yes, the cleanup will address those things and should bring many other advantages. For example, HTML5 will make embedding much simpler and with less code. It should be faster than the current implementation. The old legacy code will go away. NAML was a great experience that will guide us through the design of the new language. We plan to release both systems in parallel. So you will be able to keep your old forum running while you test the new system (with a different URL just for testing purposes). After the new forum is ready to receive users, the forum owner will be able to switch and keep old URLs working with the new system. We will help people move their NAML code into the new language.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Harvey
Old URLs are crucial.

Will the new URLs look different?

I love the fact that with NAML if you CHANGE the name of a post the new URL still works.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
Harvey44 wrote
Old URLs are crucial.
We know that.
Harvey44 wrote
Will the new URLs look different?
They will stay the same for posts, topics and apps. Other URLs may change (configuration pages, user account page, people page, etc.), but we can possibly add redirects if needed.
Harvey44 wrote
I love the fact that with NAML if you CHANGE the name of a post the new URL still works.
Yes, that will continue to work as always.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Mencey Melgar
I just wanted to say: I can't wait!!! this are great news :D! I'll be waiting eagerly this release!

Thank you nabble team, I really enjoy coding and all naml stuff is a world of inspiration and creativity for me, I hope that my enthusiasm to explore it will be increased with those new tools and languages!

Question: More or less, how much will take you to launch this new version?

Thanks and best rewards!
:) Helper
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
LouK wrote
Question: More or less, how much will take you to launch this new version?
This is a difficult question. I would say at least six months, but no promise. We are working hard, you can be sure.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Mencey Melgar
 I'll be waiting impatient  
:) Helper
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Re: Avatar Man!

Harvey
I would suggest trying to make the apps more mobile friendly.

While they render well (on my droid anyway) posting is REALLY hard.

If forums are to survive, they've got to work well on phones.
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Re: Avatar Man!

Hugo <Nabble>
Mobile is part of the goal. The default framework will be twitter's bootstrap, which allows responsive design.