Default avatar suggestions

[therassolution]

Hi Nabble Support-

It was recently pointed out to me by one of my valued readers of my blog that the default avatar for the forum is a male figure.  This is just one of many things that reinforces a bias in my particular industry which has historically been a male dominated field.  It would be nice if Nabble could be a leader for a more inclusive environment and change the default to something more neutral (less obviously male or maybe even an object or something) for the default avatar.  

Thanks for your consideration.

[Israel <Nabble>]

We appreciate your feedback, we'll consider your suggestion and we'll discuss this with our development team.

[GregChapman]

I agree.

For some reason around five years ago Nabble suddenly introduced the new avatar that in most cultures does have a more male appearance.

It would certainly be good for administrators to be able to install their own forum default avatar.

Currently, the code for the default avatar appears to be a binary file not NAML so not editable by administrators.

[Israel <Nabble>]

The default avatar looks like a man because the most part of the users are men, but people should add a their own photo or an image of their own preference.

[GregChapman]

Hi Israel,

I should have said, Welcome to the Team earlier! :-)

You give the same initial answer as Hugo did. See:
http://support.nabble.com/Avatar-Man-td7580843.html
He did eventually concede that there was a case for returning to a less gender specific default avatar.

You don't make a good case for your argument that people should upload their own avatar, nor in justifying the case for keeping a male avatar on the grounds that most users are male. (Isn't it something approaching a self fulfilling prophesy?)

You might have been better suggesting that on forums where personalised avatar's are not the norm then Administrators should set to show them "Small" when it becomes impossible to distinguish more the gender specific features:

Options > Application > Change appearance > Preferences > Classic topic page > Picture size

 (to which I would have then suggested that the default avatar should be female as a further incentive for the male users to upload their own avatar on those forums where a personalised avatar is the norm and avatars are displayed "Big") :-)

As a new boy on the Nabble team, we'll also let you off not displaying your username status in <pointy brackets>!

[GregChapman]

For interest only I used the Wayback Machine to locate an old Nabble default avatar and came up with this:

I confess it's not the way I remember it!

EDIT: I've now changed my avatar on this forum, so others can more easily find this less gender specific avatar and copy it to use on their own forum.

[yume]

holly shit.
default figure is male anyway

[Harvey]

I brought this up years ago and submitted a female version done by an artist that matched the style of the man.

http://support.nabble.com/Avatar-Man-td7580843.html#a7583123

http://support.nabble.com/Member-Profiles-td7583880i40.html#a7586381

[Flick]

Good Grief. It's fine as it is.

[GregChapman]

I guess you run a forum where gender is not an issue, or where it is the norm for users to add their own, so the default avatar matters far less.

Currently, I feel it is legitimate to describe Nabble's software as institutionally sexist.

While I don't think the original avatar is appealing in the slightest, I don't think it can be  claimed to be either gender or culturally specific and that has be be important when the software has universal application..

That's why my preferred option would be for Nabble to return to the original because it is so non-specific, but an alternative would be to offer a small library of standard avatars for users to pick, in much the same way as it provides a set of smilies, with the current option of uploading one's own image.

[Harvey]

In our forum the generic was called nipple man.

[sparkle]

I am female and have female users on my forum - don't think anyone is bothered by the slightly male appearance of the avatar.  I'm sure people look too much into tiny details these days.

[Flick]

For the love of God Greg, grow up. Nobody cares. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Maybe this article will help you. It's written by leading, feminist writer Camille Paglia.

It's a Man's World