Quoting Mark Harrison:

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Quoting Rifter:

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My biggest problem with all of this is that instead of people working their differences out the old fashioned way, we're relying on some artificial system that has the potential for abuse.

John, I think most of us agree.  But you've been around here a long time now.  You know who hates who and which groups the different users fit into.  Do you honestly believe that these people were working out their differences with the old system?  All I saw were the same old people having the same old fights year after year after year.  I don't think some people ever would have worked out their differences.  And when peace did come, it was short lived, or the players were swapped out for newbies who took up the same old fights.  And while this was going on, many good users who weren't interested in seeing the same old crap left out of disgust.

You system sounds good on paper.  It even works well most of the time in real life.  But I don't believe it was working here.

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Too many people want to solve a problem by muzzling the people who disagree with their point of view.

[b]
Hopefully that won't happen.  We're not supposed to hand out negative votes just because someone disagrees with us.  And there's already some evidence of Ken removing bad votes that weren't justified.  I don't think he's going to let this happen.  If you respectfully disagree with someone, you shouldn't get dinged for it.  If you rudely disagree with someone, you probably will get dinged for it.[/b]

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Like I said, maybe this will work, maybe it won't.  I hope it does.  But, it saddens me greatly that people would rather turn over what amounts to their sovereignty to an artificial system.  If we're going to go down that road, I'd just as soon have a real flesh and blood moderator.

From what I've seen, we still have a flesh and blood moderator.  I've already heard of Ken overriding votes.  And he's said this isn't meant to replace him and Gerri from performing moderator duties.  It's just a tool to assist them.

Mark:

With all due respect, my friend, I have already seen it. And I further have no doubt that despite the realtively neutral tone of this post, that it will draw negative votes.

Skip

I have to agree with Mark.  There will be some people who will abuse the system at first but, as Ken has pointed out, the improper negative marks have already been removed AND the offending persons were given notice.

Will you be unfairly judged?  Probably.  But those people who are doing so are being very short sighted.  Ken will quickly see who has an axe to grind and has promised to take action.

Quoting Martin_Zuidervliet:

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Quoting Ken Cole:

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The the star background isn't transparent, make sure you're not running IE 6, which doesn't support transparency in PNG files.

The star is not transparent in IE6 because of the PNG-file format? Why not use GIFs instead?

IMHO a good idea, because we have to consider that IE has still a market share of >50% 

I do not understand what you mean, doctor. I'm using a GIF for my "Daddy DVD"-text myself and it blends in quite well. Besides according to this statistic IE6 is still used by 1/3 of the users (including myself) and I do not think they are going to switch just to see a blending star.

It has nothing to do with a license because the emoticons are GIFs.

Quoting Mark Harrison:

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Quoting Martin_Zuidervliet:

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It has nothing to do with a license because the emoticons are GIFs.

Then you'll have to ask the big guy.

I did but I think he's still asleep.

Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

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The issue before the patents expired is that you had to acquire a license in order to create a GIF image file.  There was no restriction on using a GIF image.

OK, thanks for clearing this up. But as I understand correctly that's not the issue anymore. So bring on the GIF-stars (or remove the PNG-stars ).

Quoting Martin_Zuidervliet:

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The star is not transparent in IE6 because of the PNG-file format? Why not use GIFs instead?

Because PNG has an option for alpha-channel transparency which is far superior to the one-color-transparency of GIF.

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Besides according to this statistic IE6 is still used by 1/3 of the users (including myself) and I do not think they are going to switch just to see a blending star.

Unfortunately you simply can't wait for Microsoft to pick up standards like that. Opera and Firefox (and pretty much everything else) are able to render alpha-PNGs for years, it's a bad joke that IE6 can't handle it, I just hope IE7 can.

cya, Mithi

PS If you, for whatever reason, absolutely have to use PNG and still doesn't want to exclude IE6-Users, simply use "one color transparency", that mode is supported in IE6.