Then why have usernames (displayed) at all? Why is a picture so different than a username in terms of degrading the painting of a "portrait" of ideas? You could drop them altogether or replace them with a random string (generated each page view).
The way the user names are colored, it looks like we barely have them at all: The post text is in black, and the other information is in gray. I frequently find myself reading the text before I read who wrote it... which I think is just fine. It sends the message that the content is more important than the poster.
Leaving usernames out entirely would make it harder to gain reputation which would probably reduce the amount of incoming content. The reputation aspect tied to a name, the cult of personality, is part of what keeps this thing churning.
Imagine watching the NBA on TV with no names on the jerseys and all the faces blurred out. Writing style without names would be (in some but not all cases) like trying to identify players by their shoes, tattoos or morphology (read: mostly freakish tallness).
This is an interesting observation. I don't watch basketball, but usually when I watch sports, I watch for skill, and don't really care who is performing it. If you see a brilliant shot it doesn't matter who did it, so the names and faces might as well be blurred out.
That it would be unpleasant to the watcher if the names and faces were blurred out, implies that the celebrity nature of the activity holds much importance.
Haha, just saying, FWIW, because your comment was interesting.
I would posit that the celebrity nature of professional sports is the biggest contribution to making them becoming huge money-making enterprises in the last few decades. If you made all players anonymous, I would bet money that the enterprise would shrink and become a more local phenomenon.
I can't remember who, but someone observed that (according to them) the reason people will emotionally invest in teams, players, artists etc., instead of just cheering for whoever performs best at any given time, is that they like to bet something. There's a risk if you have a favorite team or player and they might lose, because then you lose: so, there's some excitement to be had not just over the play but also the ultimate result.
How this relates to the present topic I don't know; hell, I'm not even sure this hypothesis is correct. I just think it's interesting.
While I do see the value of having a profile picture, the comparison you draw here doesn't hold. To answer this comment of yours, an avatar and a username are "so different" in the sense that comics and novels are different: they can both tell stories, but the degree of freedom of imagination on the reader's part is larger in the latter case (this is only of minor relevance, but it takes apart your argument).
Two, getting a username is considered a sunk cost, one many are willing to pay, but setting up a picture is an additional cost; some will pay, but I would wager many of us here won't bother. However, once you set up the option, there will be a "ah, they're the ones who like to update their profile pic!" and "ah, they're among those who simply don't care!" Assume many people don't bother, you still need to make do, which is your current situation.
Third, user-selected pictures carry a lot more information than just the usernames, and this information may simply detract from the core of the site, which is the content and discussion. If you treat usernames just as differentiating handles, they currently serve exactly that purpose.
Of course, you will be right to say that pictographs can be more efficiently retrieved from memory here, but the case doesn't seem strong enough to spur investing time into accommodating the functions in the code. I agree with pg above in this thread.
That's exactly the problem I am describing. They are making their own portraits, but they aren't sticking to their usernames, at least for me. A visual icon would help. It could be small, 25x25 as someone suggested.
Maybe you could write a Greasemonkey script? You could have randomly generated avatars like Miis. Then you could also assign an image for specific posters that you feel are better indicative of their personalities.
I'm not sold on the idea of something like this here, but even a very small icon (like 16x16 or smaller--very small) or bullet of color would would make threads easier to keep track of.
The only problem with identicons I have seen is that the algorithm used causes a majority of them to look like swastikas. But that seems like an easy thing to fix. Most of the identicons are quite pretty (including a large number of swastikas), but most people still associate swastikas with naziism.
Swastikas aside, I don't personally feel they're a good solution. They can be useful in semi-anonymous situations to determine one person from another (or an impostor posing as someone else), but I don't find them even vaguely recognizable from one another in the most case. They're very easily confusable.
I think the human brain is optimized for recognizing faces. Those geometric variations of identicon don't look different enough in my opinion. I like the general idea, though.
If the purpose is -- as you say -- to "start associating usernames more with their set of comments", then random images should suffice. If the purpose is to have a visual item of personal expression added to each post, I suppose you'd need each person to choose one for themselves.
Well, a random image may not suffice for that purpose. I just don't know. Maybe for it to work, it has to be some sort of recognizable image. But random images would at least be worth a shot.
I disagree, but that would certainly be a good start. I disagree because then I would have to click each time to see it, and that is an extra step. With some small icon on the page, I'd develop the history in an osmosis-like manner.
I agree. I think we can all give links to our blogs, or make a community on facebook. Actually, I am just going to do that and submit a link for those who are interested.
Of course it was a metaphor, and I continued it. I wasn't being literal. I'm saying if you did look at the set of comments of a person, you would see the "portrait." But that isn't happening, since at least in my mind, over time that set of comments isn't being associated with that username.
