Octopus Overlords

I haven't added any new smilies (e.g. ) in a while, and rather than having me scour the internet looking for the next new OO smilie, I thought I'd put the community to work. So we're holding our first smilie contest to see what lucky GIF will find its way into our smilie directory.

The rules are simple.

1) Submissions will be accepted in this thread until sometime in the morning of Tuesday the 19th.
2) Everyone can participate, but please limit yourself to no more than 3 smilies per person.
3) Post your submissions in one post, using the [img] tag to embed the smilie(s).
4) Common sense applies here. Smilies that obscene, otherwise NSFW, overly large (either in file size or dimensions), require some sort of payment or are copyrighted will not be accepted. Management reserves the right to not accept a smilie for any other reason they might make up, including they're just having a bad day and the smilie looked at them funny.
5) At the end of the submission period, we'll gather up all the entries and post them for the community to vote on.
6) We're playing this by ear, but depending on the number of submissions, we may choose more than one winner. We may also rotate winning smilies out if we do this again in the future.

I would also suggest you try to make sure the smilie would work in both our basic themes, that is with a lighter blue background and a black background.

Feel free to also ask any questions in this thread.

Here are three that seem useful:

Shamelessy cribbed from GT:

Hard to narrow down:

# 1 is a must I say!

tjg_marantz wrote:

Ha!

everyone likes to rock out once in a while

godhugh wrote:

tjg_marantz wrote:

Ha!

I definitely think we need the slapfight.

There can be only one:

Ironrod wrote:

godhugh wrote:

tjg_marantz wrote:

Ha!

I definitely think we need the slapfight.

Absolutely.

I also like Grund's first two.

tjg_marantz wrote:Hard to narrow down:

# 1 is a must I say!

Yeah, I'm digging that one.

Can we do 4?

I like Grund's first two, slapfight and facepalm.

There don't seem to be that many submissions. Why can't we do them all? We have an entire deck of cards after all...not that there's anything wrong with that.

If we are stuck only getting 3, though, I can't live without these:

Grundbegriff wrote:

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:

It's sort of odd that this is made into such a big deal. When we wanted a bunch of cool smilies at Popehat (including the slapfight), we just installed all the ones that seemed useful (which took only a few minutes) and were done with it.

It's this slow-motion committee with hard caps on contributions and overthink everything mentality that led to the front-page-after-only-three-years-of-prep fiasco.

We have an entire deck of cards

Exactly. How absurd to impose artificial limits on 5k graphics files.

You know, this was supposed to be something fun, and possibly recurring. It really didn't cross our minds that people would look on the negative side of things.

ImLawBoy wrote:You know, this was supposed to be something fun, and possibly recurring. It really didn't cross our minds that people would look on the negative side of things.

This morning is the deadline. Six people contributed. 14 neat smilies were proposed, for an average of 2.333 smilies per contributor.

I'm suggesting that there might've been more participation, more smilies to choose from, and more fun without the cumbersome rules-oriented apparatus. I mean, is it really a successful smilie cattlecall when OO's King of the Smilies doesn't even find it interesting?

Why not just post a call for smilies, let it float for a while, and then use whatever seems good instead of "Max of 3! Hard deadline! Vote! Rotate the tiny graphics files out!", etc. Not to be crabby, but how is all this heavy weather conducive to having fun?

Nobody is being negative, we are just lobbying for more than one smiley

ImLawBoy wrote:You know, this was supposed to be something fun, and possibly recurring. It really didn't cross our minds that people would look on the negative side of things.

You're new at this internet thing, aren't you?

Jag wrote:Nobody is being negative, we are just lobbying for more than one smiley

Well, one person was being negative.

tjg_marantz wrote:You're new at this internet thing, aren't you?

You'd think I would have prepared for this.

It's this slow-motion committee with hard caps on contributions and overthink everything mentality that led to the front-page-after-only-three-years-of-prep fiasco.

Since I'm the only one that came up with the rules, are you saying I'm responsible for the front page fiasco?

My own theory on why this thread has so few submissions is that it's in the meta forum, which is one of our least active forums. I've been wondering if it would've got more activity if it had been put in EbG, but I guess we won't know until/if I run it again.

Our lack of smilies is, at least as I understand it, because we're not a forum that wants 100 smilies in the panel. Different forums take different perspectives on it. Some (well, most) put a lot in. We put a few in. Others turn them off altogether. Of course I probably don't really need to explain this all to you as I'm sure you're aware of most (if not all) of it.

Suffice it to say I thought the contest would be a fun thing that fits within our view on smilie usage/support. Sorry if that isn't the case. Part of the idea of running it was to see if there was any interest.

Side note on the card smilies, they were put in to facilitate some of the forum games that were going on. I put them behind the "view more smilies" link to keep it from getting cluttered. Most people probably don't even know they're in there.

We need these now more than ever!

Jag wrote:We need these now more than ever!

ImLawBoy wrote:

Jag wrote:Nobody is being negative, we are just lobbying for more than one smiley

Well, one person was being negative.

I'm not really negative; I'm just drawn this way.

Besides, I was just taking a cue from stessier's whiny post. Kill the stessier! Kill the stessier!

Gedd wrote:Since I'm the only one that came up with the rules, are you saying I'm responsible for the front page fiasco?

Nope-- just saying that there's a similar mentality.

My own theory on why this thread has so few submissions is that it's in the meta forum, which is one of our least active forums. I've been wondering if it would've got more activity if it had been put in EbG, but I guess we won't know until/if I run it again.

Agreed.

Our lack of smilies is, at least as I understand it, because we're not a forum that wants 100 smilies in the panel.... We put a few in....
-{snip}-
I put them behind the "view more smilies" link to keep it from getting cluttered. Most people probably don't even know they're in there.

Consider the relationship between
(a) taking a minimalist approach because we prefer that the posting form be kept clean, and
(b) taking a more inclusive approach, but putting the surplus behind the link to keep the posting form clean

The latter makes the former much less important, since any number of desired smilies can be quarantined among the cards. The primary input panel is kept clean; the larger smilie contingent is supported; the universe remains intact!

Grundbegriff wrote:Besides, I was just taking a cue from stessier's whiny post. Kill the stessier! Kill the stessier!

I wasn't whiny, I just hate making choices and trying to see if I could have my cake and eat it too.

Gedd wrote:Side note on the card smilies, they were put in to facilitate some of the forum games that were going on. I put them behind the "view more smilies" link to keep it from getting cluttered. Most people probably don't even know they're in there.

I know that's why they are there, but it was more to point out that it probably wasn't a phbb3 limitation that was preventing us from having more than 3. I didn't know the whole history about why we don't have more than we do, so I learned something today despite my best efforts to the contrary.

One other - not whiny, just wondering if you've thought of - question - what happens when you rotate the smilies that win (if you decide to do this again)? Won't there be a whole lot of funny posts that will lose something in the translation???

(I don't know why, but I always laugh whenever I see that one. I need help...)

Grundbegriff wrote: It's this slow-motion committee with hard caps on contributions and overthink everything mentality that led to the front-page-after-only-three-years-of-prep fiasco.

I would suggest it's the whiny complainers who-are-too-lazy-to-commit-their-own-time and help out that result in said fiasco's.

The idea was supposed to be fun (and to gauge interest in change.. it's a fickle group), regardless there was probably a better way to recommend improvements grund, than coming down on a group of volunteers.

Grundbegriff wrote:

FishPants wrote:

Grundbegriff wrote: It's this slow-motion committee with hard caps on contributions and overthink everything mentality that led to the front-page-after-only-three-years-of-prep fiasco.

I would suggest it's the whiny complainers who-are-too-lazy-to-commit-their-own-time and help out that result in said fiasco's.

I agree. Lazy whiner/complainers are just awful.

FishPants wrote:The idea was supposed to be fun (and to gauge interest in change.. it's a fickle group), regardless there was probably a better way to recommend improvements grund, than coming down on a group of volunteers.

Thanks.

The Preacher wrote:

Grundbegriff wrote:

Thanks!

Grundbegriff wrote:

The Preacher wrote:

Grundbegriff wrote:

Thanks!

I lol'd

Jag wrote:

Grundbegriff wrote:

The Preacher wrote:

Grundbegriff wrote:

Thanks!

I lol'd

So did I. If we ever add that one it MUST be called "The Grund"

This whole process is broken without dbt1949.

Gedd wrote:Our lack of smilies is, at least as I understand it, because we're not a forum that wants 100 smilies in the panel. Different forums take different perspectives on it. Some (well, most) put a lot in. We put a few in. Others turn them off altogether.

I co-run a forum with a LOT of smilies available. I use them seldom, but if it makes the other members happy to have a dancing elephant (and a group hug, and a martini, and a dead horse being beaten, and a shambling zombie, and...), they can have the damn dancing elephant. Of course, I'm not responsible for any of the smilie maintenance aspect of things, so it's easy enough for me to say I don't care how many they want. I just ban bots and make the occasional thread sticky.

It makes sense to me that there was little response to this thread because most people don't care too much about how the board runs as long as it runs. I am glad to understand the playing cards now though, didn't get the logic of those before.

I haven't seen this thread til right now . Too late I suppose but here are a few:

We use at work in the JIRA instance to mark the status "In Testing".

Whatever happened to Gedd?