Topic on Talk:Flow Portal/Archive2

I know that the topic of avatars has been discussed already, and really, I can't see at all how it could work. We have an enormous amount of users, from a huge amount of cultures. Some users might react to someone's avatar in ways that would damage the community's ability to work together. Throwing in someone's personal identity into every post is asking for trouble. Most users are anonymous, and people like this. And some users are minors. How would we manage if all our younger admins/bureaucrats/developers/editors had their face attached to their comments? I don't even know if it would be legal. Loads of older users would immediately start behaving differently toward them. And what of our many users who don't look, say, respectable, to certain other users? We have enough drama as it is. Please don't add to it by attaching bad first impressions set by whatever prejudices users inherit from the cultures they come from.

Having no significantly visible external identity is kind of important for Wikimedians to work together. In some communities, personal stuff is actively repressed. On the English Wiktionary, userboxes are prohibited. I wouldn't be surprised if some communities banned mentioning one's real name. Anonymity is valuable, and the fact that currently barely anyone knows each other's names or genders is a plus. Avatars would throw all that away, and for what? What's the potential benefit?

I have no issue with avatars. Avatars are graphical representations of how a person feels about themselves. I'm a member on many forums that use them, and I have never seen it as an issue. The Stack Exchange networks are a fairly well known non-social media that uses avatars. All of the social media sites allow this. My concern and proposal on the matter is this: If the avatars for people are hosted remotely, like how the avatars shown on the SE networks use W:Gravatar to host the avatar then that would probably be fine. If the WMF site had to hold them, it opens the door to all kinds of copyrighted images and other legal concerns that I would be opposed to having to have a group of users to "play God" and decide which ones are fair and good and which ones aren't.

Acceptable legal concerns will be sorted out by the Wikimedia Legal team, though from what I understand if the images are small enough they probably won't be a concern in general. Whatever the case the projects themselves would also be able to police things further if it comes to it.

If you don't want an avatar, then just upload a blank white square as your "picture".

Ummm... Wouldn't it be more appropriate for it to use a default shadow-head and not upload anything if you don't want an avatar?

I'm not sure where this talk of Avatars is, but I want to bring up two points:

1) Commons' incoming image vetting system is overloaded, with far too many things falling through the cracks (both copyvios not being spotted and legitimate images not being properly categorized so they can be found later). English Wikipedia's incoming image vetting system is critically overloaded, as it has only a tiny fraction of the number of image workers Commons does, but the second highest upload rate across WMF all projects. If users are able to upload avatars locally, image workers, already strained, might buckle.

2) The "policing content" and "distracting visuals" comments from Quiddity in this thread are valid points in need of serious consideration. English Wikipedia, at least, already has enough enforcement problems and wannabe dictators to cause tension, and... well... also massive numbers of vandals.

Please take these things into consideration.

I wouldn't be opposed to avatars if they didn't cause additional strains as Sven is concerned with. Is using a service like w:Gravatar like the w:Stack Exchange Network does out of the question? Just curious. :)

I support allowing avatars, given that users have options to manage them.

First of all, displaying avatars should be disabled by default. Users would freely opt in, and freely choose an avatar.

Then there's the issue of copyright. Since images must be freely-licensed, I suggest offering a few generic, well-designed avatar options before allowing customised images. Then, the community should decide which rules will apply to them. Bye!

Avatars are most definitely not on the table at this time.

There may come a day when they are (and I hope it comes, to be honest), but if they do it will be part of a larger thrust at discussing identity and profiles. With regards to Flow, avatars are not necessary and serve mostly to pollute the conversation.

So here's my Official Word(tm): Avatars will not be rolled out as part of Flow.

Good to know. Thanks.

(For future reference/readers, I suspect all the questions in the thread were regarding the old concept mockup image, File:WMF-Flow-Concept-open.png, which is why we assumed avatars were (or might be) part of it initially.)