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

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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%)

Allow optional alt text in custom mood themes

[jadelennox]

Title:
Allow optional alt text in custom mood themes

Area:
mood themes

Summary:
Allow creators of custom mood themes to add optional alt text to describe images where the mood itself is not enough for rich description.

Description:
As discussed in http://dw-accessibility.dreamwidth.org/10005.html, some mood themes (usually custom ones) can be richly described by more than the mood itself. Many, for example, use images from shared media which could be interesting to anyone who shares an interest in the media source. For example, if there were a Smallville mood theme, the text would say something like "happy -- Clark smiling at Chloe" or "sad -- Lex when his car is destroyed".

For many simple mood themes, most likely including all official ones, mood icon image descriptions would just add pointless noise. "Happy -- smiling star" doesn't add much information over "Happy". Also, this would need to be documented well so makers of custom mood themes understand what kind of alt text is likely to be useful (if any), otherwise it will add pointless noise.

Suggestion: edit http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/moodthemes to include an optional text-entry field to add alt text. Write a brief and easy-to-understand description of what is useful mood theme alt text, explaining that leaving it blank may be the best choice. Then allow mood themes to have non-blank alt text.

Poll #1851 Allow optional alt text in custom mood themes

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

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This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
33 (80.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (4.9%)

(I have no opinion)
6 (14.6%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Global icons accessible by all

[chris]

Title:
Global icons accessible by all

Area:
icons

Summary:
Create a new class of icons that do not belong to any particular DW user, that can be accessed by DW users (probably restricted to paid accounts) at large without counting against individual DW users' icon limits, as an alternative to selecting one of your own icons.

Description:
Icons are expensive for DW to offer. It may be unnecessarily expensive when fifty DW users individually upload and use identical icons. It may be cheaper for DW to offer the same icon to every (paid?) user, in addition to offering slots in which people can upload their own icons.

Establish a central communal gallery of icons. These icons are not owned by individual DW users, but are instead available to all (paid?) users _as well as_ all the icons that they have uploaded into their own usericon slots. This may be computationally cheaper for DW to offer than extra usericon slots, particularly when multiple users happen to fill their slots with icons that turn out to be identical. Societally, the phenomenon of people happening to use the same icon as each other in conversation with each other is well-known and is generally enjoyed by participants; I guess it would be at least nearly as much fun - and, in some circumstances, more fun - when both people know they're using the same icon from the same source, rather than that they had both chosen to expend a precious usericon slot on the same image.

I can see three classes of problems to be solved here. One considers intellectual property issues; if you have uploaded an icon yourself, you have the responsibility for ensuring you have the right to use it, whereas if you are using an icon from a global gallery then you have not had to consider this yourself. (However, this can be resolved by ensuring that all icons uploaded to the global gallery are IP compliant at the time of uploading.) A second class of problem considers UI issues - lists of scores of icons are already unwieldy, so adding potentially hundreds more to the list could get very unwieldy and having different UI for selecting usericons that you have uploaded personally than for selecting usericons from the global gallery risks being confusing. A third class of problem considers drama when people become too personally attached to usericon concepts which might happen to be replicated globally, but this is not functionally different to problems that may exist already, just on a different scale.

Compare this with the "Communal Community icons" suggestion, but expand the concept from a community-wide to a DW-wide, or paid-DW-wide, scale.

Poll #1854 Global icons accessible by all

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
7 (11.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (6.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
33 (54.1%)

(I have no opinion)
14 (23.0%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.9%)