Polls and Avatars

[Leper]

What do you think of having public Polls?

I currently have them disabled on my site because I feel that they cause more trouble than they are worth. I have noticed that this site doesn't have polls either, and I'm wondernig if there is a valid reason (that I'd like to confirm) behind this.

Avatars.. no Avatars on my site either. Primarily because I think they make a site look too busy, cluttered, or messy. I also feel that if I put in avatars that look right, I'll open up a can of worms ie: "Why cant we upload avatars?" "why cant we link to them?"

Regardless, I would like to find out if any site owners are for/ against polls and avatars as well.

[soniCron]

I rather miss avatars in this forum. I'm certainly no fan of the messy, busy forums out there, but I like to think this forum is populated by a mature group of developers that would keep it "clean." I'm always surprised to see what our posters look like when they upload a photo of themselves, and I think it would be great to be able to put a face to a name. Many other mature forums keep the bar high when they allow avatars, and I don't believe these forums would be any different. I'd love to be able to see what we look like. If there was some sort of rule that the image had to be:

1. Yourself
2. Your company logo
3. or a character from your game

...then I suspect we could keep it civil while adding a touch of personality. How about it, admins? Pleeeeease? *begging*

[Leper]

Man... I'm totally doing that Dan!!!! If I can call you Dan?

[soniCron]

Man... I'm totally doing that Dan!!!! If I can call you Dan?

Of course. You know, I was talking about the Indiegamer forums, but...I'm glad I could help you out!

[Leper]

Yeah.. I realize.. But I know a good idea when I see one

[turbo]

Imho, polls and avatars can add greatly to a forum. If you keep it well moderated, as this one appears to be, you shouldn't have any problems.

Our forum, Krabbit Korner is a family oriented site which has polls, avatars and pic sigs. We also allow uploading of images.

We moderate diligently. Any images must fit within specific size guidelines. Any content not suitable for small children to view is not permitted.

True, our forum is not that big, but mostly because we aren't ready for it to be.

[electronicStar]

If it was my board, I would personally not authorize avatars and signatures, if you want to keep your discussions relevant and full of content.
As for the polls, they can be useful, you just have to moderate heavily the useless polls.

[ggambett]

I like to think this forum is populated by a mature group of developers that would keep it "clean."

Lots of people here don't even have reasonable signatures nor any kind of maturity, as evidenced by the amount of noise they produce. I think allowing avatars would be a disaster.

BTW, once upon a time, polls were enabled. They were disabled after it was painfully obvious that most of the time they were completely useless and were pure noise ("should my blog use the red design or the blue design?"). I'm against anything that makes useless content easier to generate.