Why do, relatively, so few of you set an avatar for your profile?
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Sure. And since Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, it is embedded into some context... I mean we also connect to services like Mastodon with a very different approach. And we have things like Mbin with a hybrid approach. And as mesa said, Piefed tries to do some additional things as well. But the way Piefed currently handles missing avatars is to just not show any, it'll just be the username as text aligned to the left.
(And I think the stream of faceless opinions is part of the idea behind Lemmy... Whether that's a good or bad thing, or could be improved.)
And I think the stream of faceless opinions is part of the idea behind Lemmy
Definitely think "bad thing" considering the trolls and shills we've had to deal with here, but that topic is far outside the scope of this "Ask" post lol.
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As a UI developer, that’s always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
You could just do those autogenerated things instead of a static image if they haven't set one. Like, hash their username and use the bits of the hash as an input to some function that procedurally-generates an image. Makes it easy to visually-identify users without needing them to go out and manually create an avatar.
I don't really care much about the visual appearance myself, but I did want something unique to make it easier to visually-identify my posts for other users. Humans can identify color in their visual field in constant time, so having different colors for different users is helpful. I plonked "wave swirl"---the first thing that came to mind---or something like that into Stable Diffusion 1.5, got a picture of a wave, haven't touched it since.
EDIT: For a good example, I always easily identify @[email protected] comments, as he's got custom colored Unicode in a display name and a custom avatar and custom background. I don't care enough to go do that myself, but it does highlight the fact that it can be useful for rapidly-identifying people in a conversation.
For those who can't see avatars, he looks like this in the Lemmy Web UI:
I'll add that I don't personally really like the display name functionality, because I need to refer to people in text using "@" syntax---as I did above---by their real username and it makes it slightly more obnoxious to get that, but I do have to say that it does help make users visually unique.
I think that my ideal for user identification would be maybe some sort of procedurally-generated flag as the default. Those are designed to be readily-identifiable at a distance already. Like, use the hash bits to choose one of several different groups of flags (triband, etc) and bits to choose the color of various elements in the flag. If one flag isn't enough to consume all the bits in the hash, maybe do two side-by-side, etc.
EDIT2: Hmm. Now I kind of wonder if that should be done client-side, because it could let the viewing user theme what they're seeing. Like, dark-mode people don't have to have bright flags, if someone wants a specific theme they could use that (a string of different colored cats in different poses), etc.
EDIT3: And I loathe the fact that the Lemmy Web UI by default permits animated avatars. I think I disabled animations somewhere in Firefox specifically because of the people on here using animated avatars. I think that not putting the kibosh on that was a huge mistake.
I'm just gonna reply to your edit separately lol
I'll add that I don't personally really like the display name functionality, because I need to refer to people in text using "@" syntax
Haven't used Lemmy-UI in forever, but the user search does work on display names, though the one you mentioned with the custom Unicode characters definitely wouldn't (well, not typing the letters they represent anyway).
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I use Voyager
That being said, I agree with most others and don't like them anyway; I just had no idea they were a thing.
I also use voyager; never seen avatars, didn’t know they existed.
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In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
As a UI developer, that's always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
So, since this bugs me so much, figured I'd just ask.
Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don't have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of
.eeaccounts that never bother to go back and set one.Didn’t know they were a thing and Voyager doesn’t support them.
As a software developer I’ve come to realise that most of the stuff I put extra attention to, actual users don’t care and now in just do what people ask for and nothing more.
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In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
As a UI developer, that's always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
So, since this bugs me so much, figured I'd just ask.
Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don't have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of
.eeaccounts that never bother to go back and set one.I'm lazy.
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Even though I tend to comment somewhat frequently, I prefer to be just "another voice in the crowd" I don't really want to be more easily recognized lol
With the low adoption rate of avatars they realy stand out compared to places with default avatars where they all blend together.
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I'm lazy.
You actually have an avatar, lol, so you must not be that lazy haha.
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because it doesn't matter at all
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Why the fuck would I ever want to do that? I don't even want people I know knowing who I am.
Keep my name out ya goddamn mouth — Will Smith probably
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In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
As a UI developer, that's always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
So, since this bugs me so much, figured I'd just ask.
Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don't have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of
.eeaccounts that never bother to go back and set one.With 21x21 avatars, the question is why even have this functionality in the first place. That size is too small to matter.
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In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
As a UI developer, that's always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
So, since this bugs me so much, figured I'd just ask.
Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don't have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of
.eeaccounts that never bother to go back and set one.You guys have avatars?!?
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Gonna chime in here and agree that its because its because I never see anyone else's or mine, even on the website
If you're using the Lemmy Web UI, go to your account settings. "Show Avatars" is a checkbox on the lower, left-hand panel. You might have unchecked it inadvertently.
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With 21x21 avatars, the question is why even have this functionality in the first place. That size is too small to matter.
They show up in other places. And 21x21 is still enough to visually distinguish based on them in the comments. Depending on app/UI, they're often larger in the feed and significantly larger in profiles.
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In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
As a UI developer, that's always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
So, since this bugs me so much, figured I'd just ask.
Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don't have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of
.eeaccounts that never bother to go back and set one.Because I dont care.
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Didn’t know they were a thing and Voyager doesn’t support them.
As a software developer I’ve come to realise that most of the stuff I put extra attention to, actual users don’t care and now in just do what people ask for and nothing more.
Voyager doesn’t support them.
That is one reason I never used voyager much.
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They show up in other places. And 21x21 is still enough to visually distinguish based on them in the comments. Depending on app/UI, they're often larger in the feed and significantly larger in profiles.
Didn't you want to know why people don't set avatars? I answered your question. There is no need to argue back and try to convince me that 21x21 avatars are amazing. They aren't.
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In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
As a UI developer, that's always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.
So, since this bugs me so much, figured I'd just ask.
Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don't have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of
.eeaccounts that never bother to go back and set one.None of my reddit accounts had avatars either. I would get banned so quickly it didn't make sense.
If it seems like Lemmy is a more welcoming place, I might make the effort. Not sure yet.
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Even though I tend to comment somewhat frequently, I prefer to be just "another voice in the crowd" I don't really want to be more easily recognized lol
Nailed it
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On Voyager I can't even see avatars or custom usernames
Wow, I cannot even find a setting to enable it. I used to have a very high opinion of Voyager, but I am finding recently that it is missing a lot of features.
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You actually have an avatar, lol, so you must not be that lazy haha.
Are you referring to people's profile pictures as avatars? Otherwise I have no idea what you mean.
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Are you referring to people's profile pictures as avatars? Otherwise I have no idea what you mean.
Yeah, profile pictures. In the API data, they're called
avatarso that's the term I tend to use.
