Just kidding this isn't a petition, but I was just thinking it would be cool. It would add some personality (see Voxelus forums (Don't actually there's swears)).
I was going to have this beauty as my avatar
Yes I know it's low quality but it'll look fine scaled down
I was actually thinking about this very thing earlier. I dunno if I'd take advantage of it that often, but I think it's only sensible given that we can have animated signatures.
i think baufritz has a gif avatar except its only animated when you go to his profile
but nonetheless, the problem is that with xenforo you can only have 2 things as your avatar: a file that you upload from your computer (you can't really download gifs), or a gravatar ("what the hell is that" is what i was thinking too)
Perhaps there would be a way to allow it, but have a user preference to turn them off. I know I likely would. I don't really see it as a major problem, although - I know my machine really does slow down with too many animated gifs. So, with both signatures and avatars being animated it may slow me down a little bit, but I would assume I am the minority on that issue. I don't think I have ever heard anyone else with that problem
My personal thoughts are, and I don't think I have any sort of final say, that I remember the original Atmosphir beta forum allowed them. They were never something I personally liked, but enough people seemed to enjoy them that they kept them around until the stratosphir release.
I don't really think we can base rather or not we add them purely on tradition. I think, if they are added, we try them out - if they are two distracting or if people are misusing them then we can drop them. Although, that opinion is form on the bias that I personally don't mind them.
Wowfunhappy wrote:I'd say they are too, but they're a tradition of sorts.
So you don't want animated avatars because they're "distracting", but animated signatures get a pass (even though by that nature they are even more distracting than gif avatars) because they're tradition?
That's some iffy reasoning there, WFH.
I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to have animated avatars when we already allow animated signatures, and signatures take up a lot more space than avatars do.