In comment sections or in community pages, it’s mostly an ocean of default avatars.

As a UI developer, that’s always been a gripe because I put a lot of effort into making them look good and scale properly, etc. When I see 60-70% or more accounts sporting the default avatar, it makes me wonder why I even bother.

So, since this bugs me so much, figured I’d just ask.

Lemm.ee users I can understand because of the waiting period for uploads, but AFAIK, most instances don’t have that restriction. Even then, there are plenty of .ee accounts that never bother to go back and set one.

  • roofuskit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    55·
    5 months ago

    I don’t see avatars in my app and I don’t really care to. Never had them in early reddit and that’s what I’m trying to replicate.

    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      5 months ago

      I wanted to say the same, but then I saw the avatar next to your name and realized that I do in fact see avatars. I just never noticed and still don’t care.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    54·
    5 months ago

    Even though I tend to comment somewhat frequently, I prefer to be just “another voice in the crowd” I don’t really want to be more easily recognized lol

  • junkthiefEnglish
    26·
    5 months ago

    Lemmy is a place I prefer to be as anonymous as I can while still participating so I don’t set one for myself and I use voyager the vast majority of the time so I don’t see anyone else’s. I personally don’t find profile pictures/avatars add anything to the experience for me.

  • Casanunda@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    5 months ago

    I don’t care about mine or anybody elses avatar, also profiles with avatar usually are: selling something (OF) or company profiles or bot accounts, so any account with an avatar is kinda sus to me.

  • FundMECFS
    24·
    5 months ago

    In voyager your can’t see avatars. A lot of people use voyager.

  • ValiantDust@feddit.org
    24·
    5 months ago

    I think many use apps that don’t show avatars. I usually browse lemmy with Eternity and sometimes forget they even exist.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
    22·
    5 months ago

    One of the harsh lessons in software is learning that users sometimes have different wants and expectations than the developer. Gold-plating is a constant temptation, and it usually leads to frustration and resentment.

    At the end of the day, if 60-70% of people don’t care, either do it for the 30-40%, or do it for your own enjoyment, or put your efforts elsewhere. In any case, don’t fall into a pit of resentment just because lots of users are approaching a platform differently than you.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    21·
    5 months ago

    I think this platform is less about people and more about commenting. That’s also why we can’t even subscribe to people on Lemmy, just communities. So naturally, your profile ends up being less important. And I have close to no incentive to care about avatars. This place is more or less just about the text content and the links. And I don’t even want my real face to show up next to my stupid comments.

    I mean developers add avatar to all kinds of things, whether that’s useful or not. I myself don’t need one in Spotify or the fitness tracker app or my computer user account. They’re there nonetheless, and once you implement them, you have to deal with the UX representation. I think some users like to customize stuff so it get’s implemented. But it might be meaningless to most of us.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOPEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      I think this platform is less about people and more about commenting.

      I kind of don’t like that attitude, but looking at the state of things here, I can’t say it’s wrong.

      Not that everyone who has set a profile image is an angel, but at least it helps things not be a stream of faceless opinions. Just my thoughts, so take that with a grain of salt.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        8·
        5 months ago

        Sure. And since Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, it is embedded into some context… I mean we also connect to services like Mastodon with a very different approach. And we have things like Mbin with a hybrid approach. And as mesa said, Piefed tries to do some additional things as well. But the way Piefed currently handles missing avatars is to just not show any, it’ll just be the username as text aligned to the left.

        (And I think the stream of faceless opinions is part of the idea behind Lemmy… Whether that’s a good or bad thing, or could be improved.)

        • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOPEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          And I think the stream of faceless opinions is part of the idea behind Lemmy

          Definitely think “bad thing” considering the trolls and shills we’ve had to deal with here, but that topic is far outside the scope of this “Ask” post lol.

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
            4·
            5 months ago

            Yes, that’s likely a longer argument. I think I’m not completely considering it a bad thing… I think the old time forums had some charm to them, where you’d just contribute something to a discussion, no matter what and who you are… It’d be just about a certain topic. But that’s not really what we do here. So it’s a bit out of scope. I feel we could do that, though. The technology and set up of the platform itself should allow for those kinds of conversations… Bus yeah, it’s complicated. And this might be more social media than internet forum.

    • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
      6·
      5 months ago

      Piefed is so nice. It’s like Lemmy but you can subscribe to anything activityhub. Including user accounts.