archive/retire/unlist icons

[denise]

Title:
archive/retire/unlist icons

Area:
pretty shiny things, icons

Summary:
For people who have icons they keep around for sentimental purposes, but almost never/never use anymore, allow them to mark an icon as archived/retired/etc to keep them on an archived basis, but not regularly use them.

Description:
One of the things that came out in comments to http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/3305.html is that there are a lot of people who keep around icons that they used to use years ago, use very occasionally, or keep around because they used to apply and now don't, but don't actively use them anymore. These icons have sentimental value and are (to these users) a critical part of old comments/entries, but their presence in the icon dropdown often makes it harder to find the icons you're actively using among the retired icons.

This suggestion is to allow people to "retire" (delist, archive, some other pithy verb that will summarize the concept but not conflict with "inactive", since 'deactivating' is what happens to icons when your paid account expires and you don't have enough icon slots anymore and those icons are marked 'inactive') icons that fall into this category. (I'll use 'retire' through this suggestion for ease of reference.)

Retiring an icon would:

* Keep the icon, and its associated keywords, uploaded to your account.
* Display the icon on old posts/comments that used the icon.
* Display the icon (perhaps in a separate section) on your full icons page.
* Still count against your icon usage limit.
* Not show the icon's keyword(s) in the drop-down field selector for icon selection on post or comment.
* Not show the icon itself in the icon gallery popup feature on post or comment.

Icons could be marked unretired at any time if you wanted to temporarily use that icon, thus allowing you to (after a reload in some cases) select it again if circumstances changed and you needed it temporarily. The purpose of retiring an icon would be to preserve the history of its use and allow it to keep displaying where you used it in the past, but not have to scroll past its keywords every time you wanted to choose an icon.

So, let's say that I used to be part of TVShowFandom and had lots of TVShowFandom icons, one of which I used on all posts about TVShowFandom episodes as they aired. I'm not much into TVShow anymore, though, because it started to seriously piss me off in season 3, so I stopped watching it and stopped talking about it. My old posts about TVShowFandom might have had a bunch of "see icon" references in comments or posts (if I were the type of person who used icons as a metatextual information conduit, which I am not, but for the purposes of this suggestion let's assume I am), which would look very silly if I deleted the icons to clear up the clutter of the drop-down and let that post/comment revert to default.

If we implemented this, though, I'd be able to keep the icons uploaded, but remove their keywords from the selector drop-down, by marking the icons as retired. The icons would still show on the old posts/comments, but I wouldn't have to scroll by 75 "TVShowFandom: happy" or "TVShowFandom: you said what?" keywords to get to the ones I've uploaded for "NewShinyFandom: happy" or "NewShinyFandom: oh please". If I wanted to use an old TVShowFandom icon -- maybe I watch the straight-to-DVD movie in three years when they make it and want to talk about it -- I could temporarily unretire the icon, make my post, and then re-retire it.

(For those of you who know me, any guesses about what TVShowFandom might be are probably right. *G*)

Poll #1850 archive/retire/unlist icons

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 79

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
68 (86.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (1.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (1.3%)

(I have no opinion)
9 (11.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[poulpette]

I think that's a good idea.
What interest me more though, is what would happen when your account goes from paid to free and some of your icons are deactivated. Would the retired icons be among the first to be deactivated?

[denise]

I honestly hadn't thought about it, but considering that we have a bug open to let people pick which icons they want to keep active on expiration, I don't think it should be much of a problem.

[poulpette]

I actually wasn't seeing it s a problem, more as a possibly handy way to flag icons that would be primed for deactivation, by default at least.

[dancing_serpent]

I never minded scrolling past keywords, but that sounds really practical.

[falena]

I like this idea. Hybernating icons. :D

[foxfirefey]

I think this could probably be combined into a single page with

http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/207740.html

There could be checkboxes for each individual icon, and checkboxes to hide individual keywords for each icon.

[ldybastet]

I like this. :) And yes, I do keep a lot of icons for sentimental or old-post reasons back on LJ. I'll probably end up doing that here as well.

[copracat]

You are my favourite social network engineer for ever.

edit: (and Mark and DW volunteers)

[kerravonsen]

I'm not sure whether I would use it, but I would certainly like the option of using it.

[callaoressene]

It's ridiculous how attached we get to those little 100x100 squares isn't it? But I'm so pleased that you are actually taking this into account as there are several icons I rarely use, but I just can NOT delete off my icon list...it'd be like exiling a loved one to Siberia or something.

Although, I have to say that having it count against my usage limit, then makes me want to UP my answer on the poll about how many icon spaces is enough...perhaps I should have read this first....

[ratcreature]

I'm not sure I'd use it myself, but I can see how this could be useful for others.

[noxie]

I really like this idea.

[kyrielle]

I like this, but what if I want to retire some of its keywords but not all? Ie, I have an icon for TVShowFandom:Johnny which also has the keyword 'crazy day' because Johnny is making the OMG-life-is-nuts face. I want to retire the TVShowFandom keyword, but keep 'crazy day' active and in use because it's still my best icon for that.

If I retire the icon, I don't have that. I could upload another copy of it and give it the keyword 'crazy day' but what happens if I have two icons with the same keyword, one retired?

Would it be possible, for that matter, to retire an icon with keyword 'singing' and have it stay on all my old posts with that keyword, but upload a new 'singing' for future singing posts? My best guess would be that this is a bad idea - but if it is, then users trying to do this needs to be addressed when this is implemented, and something would need to clue me in as a user to choose, for example, singing2 as a keyword.

[triadruid]

This. I think it's a thoughtful idea but impractical, cumbersome, and doesn't really get at the heart of the problem (which appears to be the dropdown list, something I have no problem with)

[sky]

I guess it wouldn't hurt anything to have this feature, but if retired icons still count against the usual icon limit, I don't think I'd ever use it. I understand why they would count against the limit -- anything else would be unreasonable server load and you'd probably get people trying to game the system to upload more than their fair share of icons -- but fundamentally, if I have 50 icons on my account for FandomA and I get tired of it and move to FandomB, there's generally not going to be any space for FandomB icons unless I delete the the old ones. Archiving just really isn't an option in that case.

[inalasahl]

I would adore this feature.

[beet]

I LOVE this idea!

[flick]

Did anything ever come of this?

(I went to the suggestions page to make this very suggestion, but thought I'd be good and do a search first!)

Something similar for tags would be lovely, too, to stop them appearing in the autocomplete box (eg: I have a tag 'Angel" for talking about the TV show, which I haven't done in years. I have a horse called Angelo, and about one time in three I just type a-n-g-tab' and get the wrong tag...).

[denise]

It's on the list for future implementation if someone wants to grab it! (Big things like this that take a lot of work tend to wait for someone to come along who can handle big projects, ie someone more experienced, and right now most of our experienced/senior devs are having Attacks of Life...)

[flick]

Fair enough! Thanks!