Re: Proposal: Have Image Macros

in reply to Proposal: Have Image Macros

My reaction is probably pure 'stick in the mud' -- but while, IMO, a rare appearance of an image-macro would undoubtedly be amusing (assuming an 'amusing combo of image and thought), overuse would quickly make tedious even the cleverest. Consider, for a very rough parallel, were we to label every submit button 'stumbit.'

And the lower the level at which a junior member of this enterprise is empowered to insert an image-macro, the less PM experience (IOW, greater tolerance for the images) that individual would have.

.o0 Perhaps use of an image-macro should be limited to janitors... as a device for them to reinforce -- when their services are required -- the Monastery's guidance on how and what to post.

Update: spelling/typo, s/ever/every, fixed, thanks to moritz and s/reqired/required/, thanks to : caffeine ? heightened sensitivity; likewise thanks to moritz.

Comment on Re: Proposal: Have Image Macros

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Re^2: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Barney) by tye (Sage) on Jul 11, 2012 at 15:08 UTC
overuse would quickly make tedious even the cleverest No kidding. The very short wikipedia article that jdporter links to even says: This allowed the frequent use of preset text [...] which resulted in the "Timeline of history" image being banned from use And my best guess is that inclusion of this feature and success at getting it used much at all would lead to most people wanting it banned. So the feature would either be almost never used or almost always hated. Boilerplate is annoying. Implementing a way to encourage boilerplate pasted onto a "meme" picture just makes the boilerplate stand out more so you notice it more. This leads to what I call either "The Barney Effect" or "The Britney Effect". I actually enjoy Britney Spears for the most part. Barney (the purple dinosaur) has a few annoying traits. Living in a house with a very young fan of Barney or nearly just being alive a few years ago often meant being exposed to Barney and/or Britney way, way too often. The result was that both of these characters were widely and vehemently hated by a huge swath of the population. Many people who lived through such now consider one or both of those characters to be some of the most astonishingly annoying things in existence. A single second of exposure to them leads to near-violent reactions. Neither of them is really that horribly annoying when you haven't been overexposed to them. Putting meme pictures onto a site with such an understated style would mean the pictures would stick out like a sore thumb. And having a fixed set of repetitious boilerplate to draw from for the pictures would mean that even minor frequency of use would trigger The Barney Effect in many, I believe. I mostly stay away from "meme pictures" compared to your average internet user, I suspect. And yet I already find them quite banal. I don't look forward to having the already-too-common boilerplate responses that I find annoying at PerlMonks being blasted into my face with meme pictures so that the boilerplate becomes Barney and the meme pictures become Britney and the relatively few but still frequent times I run into meme pictures elsewhere I start having violent reactions instead of just sighing. From now on, when you read a BrowserUk post, imagine it contains an "All your base" pun. After just imagining that becomes annoying, start imagining that the pun is in a font several times larger and bolder than the rest of his posting as part of a picture of Barney playing bass guitar. And if you don't think there will be monks who find one particular "meme" way too funny way too often and will start pasting it almost every time they post, then I suggest you remember our dear, departed blazar. His trying to make me remember the Miss Teen Wherever candidate inanity about "don't have maps and such as" happened way too often and went on way too long to the point that it colored my whole perception of blazar. blazar is Britney Spears to me. I usually can't remember a single thing about blazar now other then "I personally believe" (but in bold) and that he died. And that makes me sad. I shudder to think how much worse it would have been if "bold tags" had been replaced by a colorful picture of something goofy amid a rather drab two-color web site. Yes, most of my references above are very "dated". That was intentional. Just about any meme picture will similarly seem very stale very quickly. I find it unwise to make PerlMonks such that the thing that any casual visitor will remember, by far, about it is that some annoying puppy keeps saying "use strict". - tye	[reply]
Re^3: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Barney) by jdporter (Paladin) on Jul 11, 2012 at 16:33 UTC
a fixed set of repetitious boilerplate to draw from My proposal does not include the availability of boilerplate. Node authors would have to supply the text to be used, every time. I believe that addresses about 86% of your objection (by volume of prose).	[reply]
Re^4: Proposal: Have Image Macros (slogans) by tye (Sage) on Jul 11, 2012 at 17:59 UTC
So you believe that the text that people will attach to a "meme photo" will be interesting, insightful, non-repetitive text? Your own example was "use strict" and "RTFM", which are already annoying, boring boiler-plate too much right now. The text will be slogans. It has to be. You can't even fit a decent Twitter blurb on a meme image. Even if I try to imagine non-repetitive text that would be short enough, I find it hard to imagine somebody using a meme image to say "Add a ; to line 6". But then, I also find it hard to imagine how doing so does anything but make that text more annoying. :) - tye	[reply]
Re^5: Proposal: Have Image Macros (slogans) by jdporter (Paladin) on Jul 12, 2012 at 14:02 UTC
Re^4: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Barney) by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jul 12, 2012 at 10:46 UTC
A largely-fixed set of "PM-approved" images would inevitably become repetitious over time. Even in the wild, where people can choose any image they want, that damn cat in a necktie shows up constantly... Given the sibling node that he's already submitted, it seems I may have misunderstood tye, but I took the "fixed set of repetitious boilerplate" as referring to the set of available images rather than the text.	[reply]
Re^3: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Barney) by ww (Archbishop) on Jul 11, 2012 at 15:30 UTC
tye I'm not sure why your reply, making much the same ultimate point ("not a really good idea") as I did is directed to me rather than to OP. It appears we agree. And I see no particular reason for thinking that my rephrasing and restatement of the wikipedia critique somehow suggests otherwise. OTOH, thank you for "banal" -- the use of which should have occurred to me.	[reply]
Re^4: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Barney) by tye (Sage) on Jul 11, 2012 at 15:42 UTC
No kidding. I'm not sure why your reply [...] is directed to me rather than to OP. It wouldn't make much sense to reply to jdporter's node saying "No kidding". I'm not sure where you got the idea that replies can only be done as a form of objection or disagreement. - tye	[reply]
Re^3: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Barney) by Khen1950fx (Canon) on Jul 12, 2012 at 00:10 UTC
I have to disagree with you. Is that annoying puppy more annoying than Camelia?	[reply]
Re^4: Proposal: Have Image Macros (Camelia) by tye (Sage) on Jul 12, 2012 at 01:00 UTC
I almost never see Camelia. So The Barney Effect does not apply. I never said the puppy was particularly annoying. I said The Barney Effect would apply to it (and the slogans that get pasted over it). But thanks for pinpointing a fine source for a potential Perl-specific "meme image" that should be considered for this proposal. - tye	[reply]

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