- Dec 30, 2002
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Notfred's script and this thread got me thinking. People keep asking for custom avatars and additional emoticons, but Jason and the Mods don't want to allow that for obvious reasons. It makes their lives a lot more difficult. Is it possible to have a script to do this on the user end?
One possibility is an expanded emoticon pack. You put :keg; in you message and anyone with the plugin installed sees a keg emoticon instead of the text. You can make whatever emotes you want. With a common download source everyone can have these additional icons. Also those of us that want the blue shocked smilie back can have it.
Another possibility is customized avatars. One way to do this is to assign new avatars to only my buddies. I can see special avatars for them, but everyone else will have their AnandTech avatars. Each person would have to customize their avatar list. Another way to do this is to have a place where I can upload an avatar and anyone with the script will see that avatar. It isn't a moderation issue at that point because a person is choosing to use that particular script. The script could even allow you to block certain users so you never see what they upload.
So now that I have this all worked out in my head, is it even possible? What other things could be done?
Update:
The last thread was deleted pending approval by the Mods, and they and Jason have looked at it and given a tentative OK.
A few of thieir rules from my PM conversations:
(Jason Clark) There is no security risk from what I see from these plugins. However, if we see too much traffic coming from a central location i.e the plugin needing some kind of server side component, we'll shut it down... We have traffic monitors in place everywhere, we've seen people sucking down our content to central places to manipulate and use. We pay for every bit of bandwidth, if we see our bandwidth being abused from one source, buh bye.
I don't see that as a problem. The script would only manipulate a page that the user downloaded anyway.
(AnandTech Moderator) We would still have questions about whether the same opening would allow ... displaying inappropriate images to the forums.
Shouldn't be a problem because the client has to choose to install the script. If they don't like it they can disable it or modify it.
Any other rules that pop up along the way I'll add here.
So here's what I want to do now that I've had some time to think about it.
Custom smilies: All this really would be is a search and replace script. Find "xxxx", replace with "yyy". For instance you would give it a rule for ":keg;" and it would replace it with "<[/b]img src="keg.gif" alt="Keg" />". Someone could put together a smilie package for everyone to download and install. It would no longer be necessary to beg for new smilies in Forum Issues. I'm thinking that the whole thing would be broken in to a script and a separate rules file. The script would read the rules file (probably some kind of XML) and would apply all of the rules it finds. It would also use the rules file to generate a dropdown menu in the reply window for all of the smilies. This would allow people to write their own set of rules, and even distribute them if they wanted.
Custom Avatars: There are a lot of options here, but the basic operation would be rule based like for the smilies. You tell the script what usernames you want to have what avatars. In its simplest form each person would be responsible for thier own set of rules. Another option is to host a rule file somewhere for download and allow people to upload the rule for their username. You could either use everybody's rule (which I could see the Mods not approving of) or you could just use the rules for your friends. Either way, the only avatars that would change would be the ones you have a rule for.
Ignore user: This same script could be used to delete posts by certain users. You could even set it to ignore quotes of their post. Find "[[/b]q][[/b]i]Originally posted by: [[/b]b]username[[/b]/b][[/b]/i] * [[/b]/q]", replace by ""
Since I'm no JavaScript expert, I have no idea what kind of impact this would have on the load times of the forums. It would have no effect on the AnandTech servers, but the local post processing of the page might be slow.
Are there any other features you can think of to add to this? I'll probably try to get started on it this weekend.
One possibility is an expanded emoticon pack. You put :keg; in you message and anyone with the plugin installed sees a keg emoticon instead of the text. You can make whatever emotes you want. With a common download source everyone can have these additional icons. Also those of us that want the blue shocked smilie back can have it.
Another possibility is customized avatars. One way to do this is to assign new avatars to only my buddies. I can see special avatars for them, but everyone else will have their AnandTech avatars. Each person would have to customize their avatar list. Another way to do this is to have a place where I can upload an avatar and anyone with the script will see that avatar. It isn't a moderation issue at that point because a person is choosing to use that particular script. The script could even allow you to block certain users so you never see what they upload.
So now that I have this all worked out in my head, is it even possible? What other things could be done?
Update:
The last thread was deleted pending approval by the Mods, and they and Jason have looked at it and given a tentative OK.
A few of thieir rules from my PM conversations:
(Jason Clark) There is no security risk from what I see from these plugins. However, if we see too much traffic coming from a central location i.e the plugin needing some kind of server side component, we'll shut it down... We have traffic monitors in place everywhere, we've seen people sucking down our content to central places to manipulate and use. We pay for every bit of bandwidth, if we see our bandwidth being abused from one source, buh bye.
I don't see that as a problem. The script would only manipulate a page that the user downloaded anyway.
(AnandTech Moderator) We would still have questions about whether the same opening would allow ... displaying inappropriate images to the forums.
Shouldn't be a problem because the client has to choose to install the script. If they don't like it they can disable it or modify it.
Any other rules that pop up along the way I'll add here.
So here's what I want to do now that I've had some time to think about it.
Custom smilies: All this really would be is a search and replace script. Find "xxxx", replace with "yyy". For instance you would give it a rule for ":keg;" and it would replace it with "<[/b]img src="keg.gif" alt="Keg" />". Someone could put together a smilie package for everyone to download and install. It would no longer be necessary to beg for new smilies in Forum Issues. I'm thinking that the whole thing would be broken in to a script and a separate rules file. The script would read the rules file (probably some kind of XML) and would apply all of the rules it finds. It would also use the rules file to generate a dropdown menu in the reply window for all of the smilies. This would allow people to write their own set of rules, and even distribute them if they wanted.
Custom Avatars: There are a lot of options here, but the basic operation would be rule based like for the smilies. You tell the script what usernames you want to have what avatars. In its simplest form each person would be responsible for thier own set of rules. Another option is to host a rule file somewhere for download and allow people to upload the rule for their username. You could either use everybody's rule (which I could see the Mods not approving of) or you could just use the rules for your friends. Either way, the only avatars that would change would be the ones you have a rule for.
Ignore user: This same script could be used to delete posts by certain users. You could even set it to ignore quotes of their post. Find "[[/b]q][[/b]i]Originally posted by: [[/b]b]username[[/b]/b][[/b]/i] * [[/b]/q]", replace by ""
Since I'm no JavaScript expert, I have no idea what kind of impact this would have on the load times of the forums. It would have no effect on the AnandTech servers, but the local post processing of the page might be slow.
Are there any other features you can think of to add to this? I'll probably try to get started on it this weekend.
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