Exclude Individual Icons from Random Selection

[archangelbeth]

Title:
Exclude Individual Icons from Random Selection

Area:
Randomized icon choice

Summary:
There's a code that will permit a random icon to be selected for posts. For some icons, it may be inappropriate to use them randomly. Excluding these inappropriate icons from random selection, with a checkbox on the icon page, might be useful.

Description:
This code tour ( http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/64126.html ) mentions being able to have a post have a random icon with a single click. My first thought was "Cool!" My second thought was, "Wait, it could be confusing if I do that and it picks one of my strongly 'themed' icons, such as '*sigh*' or 'oh dear' or 'sad eyes'... or one of the icons I use only for certain fic universes, when posting fic!"

Therefore, the ability to designate some icons as "deliberate use only" on the Icon Page, while leaving other icons available to be randomly pretty, would make an already-cool option <I>ultra</I>-nifty-keen for me.

Drawbacks:
• Makes the code more complex.
• Adds another checkbox somewhere that people have to think about.
• Requires a decision of whether newly-added icons should be random-pickable by default or if they should start life as deliberate-pick only.

Poll #3829 Exclude Individual Icons from Random Selection

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
14 (36.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (7.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
4 (10.5%)

(I have no opinion)
17 (44.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[melannen]

If another checkbox is seen as bad (which, as someone who isn't interested in the feature, I would not be delighted, tbh), it seems like it would be possible to do this unobtrusively using keywords, sort of the way you can designate a support icon using keyword.

[pseudomonas]

I like this, but it would need multiple icons to be able to share the same keyword.

Is there a convention that keywords matching a particular pattern are to be considered "magic words" rather than plain old keywords?

[melannen]

Yes, there's a least one "magic" keyword - if you keyword an icon '_support', it gets automatically used for all posts on the support boards instead of your default.

You're right, though, that it would require being able to use the same keyword for multiple icons, and I don't know how hard that would be.

[pseudomonas]

I wonder how many magic words we need before it's worth saying "anything beginning with an underscore is expected to be magic and excluded from dropdown boxes &c."

[melannen]

Actually, that might be the simple way to do it: set so that, say, any icon with at least one keyword starting with an underscore (or other special character) is excluded from the randomizer...

[kerravonsen]

I think that's a bit too complicated from the user side of things, though.

[pseudomonas]

That seems very hacky. _support might well be an icon that someone wants to randomize.

[matgb]

Oh, this I knew not. Then, I don't post on the support board, so...

I ticked yes simply because I have several icons for 'categories', if I post about politics, the post gets my politics icon, and I'd not want that in a random sort, but at times I just want a random icon.

[melannen]

It is one of the legacy lj features that is ... not well documented.

[feathertail]

Wouldn't it be neat if we could just, like, drag all the icons we wanted into a "group" or something?

Admittedly it'd be overly complex on the code side of things, and it'd be a pain for anyone with dozens of icons.

[cheyinka]

It'd still be neat, though! Another use for "grouping" icons could be to show which ones could be used by someone else with/without credit, which ones the user emself had made, and so on, so it'd have more uses than just "these may be used for 'random icon' selection".

[feathertail]

This is true ... and advanced icon management features would likely be very appreciated, especially by people with tons of icons. Maybe a Javascript app, with a standard web form fallback.

Maybe I should submit this as a separate suggestion?

[cheyinka]

You should :D

[kerravonsen]

Yes, you should.

[archangelbeth]

Yes, please! That way I can vote positively on it. O:>

[cesy]

I think newly-added icons should be random-pickable by default, to make it easier for new users to discover and use the feature.

[denise]

So, the 'random icon' isn't a binding decision, so to speak -- that is, it's not like you tick a 'random' box at the time you post, and whatever icon it picks is what the entry is posted with. You push the 'random' button and it will give you a random icon, but you can review it and "re-roll", so to speak, before you confirm.

Because of that, I'm going to reject this one, just because I think that it would be another option that people would have to think about, and options are generally bad UI: it forces people to make a choice, and that stresses people out subconsciously and makes them think your software is less usable. I don't think that this is a big enough issue that it needs a new option for it, especially since the 'upload icon' form is a wee bit overcluttered as is!

[archangelbeth]

Okay! I wasn't clear that random got "re-rolls," so I's happy anyway. Thanks!