LOL you girls make me laugh. People visit your site for content. If you remove the smilies and people stop coming, well you have something wrong with your community. Obviously, your niche plays a bit, IE: if you're running a smilie design site you probably don't want to kill off that part. I do use them myself from time to time, there is a time and a place for them. It's probably just my outlook, I visit business, news, oil industry safety, mechanical type sites and they are smilie-less. If I am reading an article about an industrial fire where a number of employees were injured, the last thing I need to see is some little yellow face crying, it's simply not professional. My opinion is they have a place but should not be a defining aspect for a majority of sites.
Gods.. where to begin with this sexist little piece.
It has absolutely nothing to do with being "girls" The biggest and loudest complainers when we changed smilies one time on our tech site were men!
I specifically said that smilies might not be important to Tech or Geek sites (clearly you only visit such sites) and yes it can distract from anything serious. But I put it to you that the amount of "Forums" that are super-serious-boring-no-smilies-allowed-or-you-might-actually-enjoy-yourself-and-that-is-NOT-ALLOWED-here!!! Kind of sites is probably the vast Minority, not at all the Majority.
The sites I have owned or helped admin over the years that form the basis of my years of experience range from Technical Programming sites through to Company sites, chat sites and many serious hobby sites for both men and women, I can tell you from my experience that every single one of them used and loved the smilies, and most were begging for more smilies, some even pay to have specialist smilies made for their particular area of interest.
Forums are predominately
not news sites, so your examples are spurious, nor are they dry boring content only sites, websites serve that purpose so much better... the very nature of forums is that they are communities of people often with a common interest, and often a huge part of what makes them successful is the interactions of the members, and the sense of community they build, a key part of which is the communications between members.. such communications are greatly aided by ...... you guessed it.... Smilies!
The fact you see no purpose or value in smilies doesn't make your viewpoint valid for the vast majority of Forums, and of Admins...... regardless of gender
Like Trip said, it depends on the scope of the site.
Smilies (and especially the way they are used by many) do have the potential to harm the professional look and feeling of a site. I know quite a few forums where no graphical emoticons are allowed and it perfectly fits the environment. Nobody ever complained or brought up a thread begging for a "cry" smiley.
Not a site I would ever visit, I find the more "professional" a forum site touts it's self as being the more it is run by a humourless self important dictator. But of course, each to their own
I won't be out there lobbying for all sites to have to have smilies, or insisting that anyone holding the opinion that smilies are frivollous or "girly" be hung drawn and quartered... just so long as equally I am not disrepected for my viewpoint which is well thought out and well researched over years of experience, and is not based on my reproductive organs.
However, this is all about a forum software and smilies are an essential feature of any forum software. As long as they are optional and I can disable them, it's ok. For those who want to run forums just for fun or do not have issues with smilies, a good smiley management can be an important feature. It's definitely something a forum developer cannot ignore.
Exactly