dw_suggestions | Allow an alternate default icon for if a post's current icon is removed.

Title:
Allow an alternate default icon for if a post's current icon is removed.

Area:
icons

Summary:
Allow a user, when choosing an icon for a post, to specify an alternate icon to be used as default *for that post only* if the first choice icon is ever removed from the account.

Description:
If I run out of icon space and decide to replace a particular icon, all the past posts using that icon revert to using my default icon -- in my case, this stained-glass dragonfly. But I keep icons in clusters by interest (by fandom, actually), and if I should have to remove most of the icons from a particular fandom for space reasons, I'd like to be able to leave behind an icon from that fandom that becomes the default for that fandom's posts, instead of my overall default icon.

I picture this as an example: I have fifteen icons related to, say, White Collar. I decide on one icon to be my default White Collar icon, and then, even if I select one of the other White Collar icons for a post, I have the option to specify "alternate default icon" and that's where I enter the default icon I want to use for White Collar posts. Then, in the future, when I want to replace my White Collar icons with icons from my shiny new fandom, I know if I leave up just that one White Collar icon, all my past White Collar posts will have it instead of my stained-glass dragonfly.

Poll #3894 Allow an alternate default icon for if a post's current icon is removed.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
8 (17.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
9 (19.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
17 (37.0%)

(I have no opinion)
11 (23.9%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I probably wouldn't use it the way my icons are, but I can see how it could be useful for other. But I wonder where yet another selection field would fit. Would you see two icons and selection fields in the update/edit form for posts? Wouldn't that be cluttered? I don't like crowding the form even more, and with a redundancy thing.

Edited (forgotten word) 2010-07-22 20:42 (UTC)

I would love a feature like this, but I wonder if it might be more convenient to set a fallback preference for each icon via the icon page, rather than specify a fallback for each post.

Perhaps it could be done via a naming convention, so that, e.g., an icon with the keyword "White Collar: Character X" automatically falls back to "White Collar" (no suffix).

But, when you delete the icon tied to "White Collar: Character X" you could just put that keyword onto the icon already tied to "White Collar"?

Yes, this. You can already achieve this effect by using multiple keywords. If you didn't like having the multiple keywords and you were never going to increase your icons again, you could then use renaming to simplify it.

Exactly. This are what I did (although the merge didn't work for some of them and I never went and fixed it)

It seems like this is something else that could be done with a more flexible tagging system for icons, or a built-in subcategory system: if you could tag all your white collar icons "white collar", and then have a default "white collar" icon, any deleted icons with that tag could revert to the default.