The new Emoticons are terrible!!!

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  • Updated 6 years ago
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The new Emoticons are terrible!!! They do a terrible job of conveying emotion. The sad2 icon was the best with tears flowing everywhere. And the mad icon with the little guy jumping up and down was also great. The gun shooting icons, the angry, happy, biggrin & cheers icon were great!! These are terrible!! Please go back to the old ones. PLEASE!!
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Karen Godfrey

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Posted 6 years ago

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DrakeStraw

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I've noticed that the old ones still work in the old posts.  Why can't we then have both sets?

What I don't like about the new ones is the lack of mouseover text to give you a description.

What I do like about them is that you can quote them without removing the extra set of brackets.
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cartman_1337

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I wholeheartedly agree. In addition to what you said, they are also far too large and intrusive, and look far to cutesy.
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SataiDelen

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The new emoticons are HORRIBLE! There isn't even one to replace the old "eye-roll" emoticon! These new ones are big, and bulky and UGLY! Please bring the old ones back! Why is it that corporations like this are ALWAYS trying to fix things that are NOT broken!?

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SataiDelen

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Why can't we keep the old ones? I liked the old emoticons!

We liked them too, but we think the new ones are better. Rather than trying to go our own way with emoticons, we decided to join the rest of the world and benefit from the increasing native support in operating systems and browsers.

The new ones are NOT better. They're too big, and too bulky, and FUGLY!!!

Further, it explains a LOT that they're using Google emoticons now. Google is probably paying IMDB to use them. Google is sticking their fingers into too many cookie jars lately, and RUINING whatever they touch!

And that business about a global announcement? WHERE? I never saw one! I simply clicked on emoticons yesterday and thought my system had been hacked when I saw the junky emoticons where the old, cool ANIMATED ones had been!


Once again, IF IT'S NOT BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT!!!



In addition, it amazes me that in over FORTY pages of that thread, everyone is complaining about the new emoticons, and yet the ONE admin who does show his face in that thread, just continues to essentially say, "Well, we know that NINETY-NINE POINT NINE PERCENT of you hate the new emoticons, but we have that POINT ZERO-ONE PERCENT who do like the new emoticons, so we're just going to go with that point zero-one percent who does, and dismantle the more popular old-style emoticons and the rest of you will just have to swallow the bs we're trying to sell you here."

(Edited)
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DrakeStraw

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I'd get a lot more satisfaction if the entire board system were moved here.  We don't have any emoticons here unfortunately.JumpingHappyCool Actually we do, since you can drop an image into a post.Winking That's not ever likely to happen on the IMDb boards though, is it?Mad
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DrakeStraw

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After posting this last night, I thought, "wouldn't it be great to start a campaign on GetSatisfaction.com to use only the old emoticons available here:"

Planet Smilies

To do it effectively, open the site in another window so you can position it next to this window.  Just drag and drop the smilies into your post. The smilies can also be dragged and dropped within this page as I did with these.

JumpingHappyCoolWinkingMad
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Drake Warren

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"Why can't we keep the old ones? I liked the old emoticons!

We liked them too, but we think the new ones are better. Rather than trying to go our own way with emoticons, we decided to join the rest of the world and benefit from the increasing native support in operating systems and browsers"

I find this comment extremely interesting. Their interested in "joining the rest of the world" when it comes to implementing these crappy emoticons, but not when adding features like insert image that virtually EVERY FORUM ON THE WEB HAS EXCEPT IMDB.

The fact they would say something like that is quite laughable, especially seeing that even the feedback forum has it.
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DrakeStraw

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IMDb should be embarrassed that their feedback site is years ahead of the system we troubleshoot here.Winking
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Jane Ramirez

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Three things about the switch to EMOJI make me very unhappy:

1. The Smileys look like blobs.
2. They are static. Many of the old ones were animated, and interesting effects could be created by combining them.
3. Users have lost our identities. People used to identify my posts at a glance, because of the [cooldance] dude I used in my signature line. Many people have similar avatars, but the characteristic use of emoticons, especially in sig lines, gave us personality. 
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Alexander Engel-Hodgkinson

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Precisely.  And now they're gone, due to "popular demand," which is obviously a big load of bull.
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David S. Issel

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I hate the new pictures.  They're awful.  They're too big, don't move, and look childish.

Please go back to the old ones.

Thanks.
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David S. Issel

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I know you might think this is a minor thing (I mean, it's just smilies for god's sake)...

But, basically, you've forced us to change the language we use to express ourselves.

And, YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY ASK ANY OF THE USERS before you made this change.
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bluesmanSF, Champion

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Wow, sorry to hear that.
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Nasro Subari

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I second Issel's comment! [angry5]
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(closed account)

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    "... basically, you've forced us ..."
Count me out of that argument.  IMDb doesn't "force" me to do anything.  If I don't like the way things are going, I am free to go elsewhere.  I am not so dependent on IMDb that I couldn't afford to leave.  (That said, I'm not going to leave the boards just because of an emoji infestation.) ;-)
    "... to change the language we use to express ourselves."
Can it be argued that these pictorial symbols serve identifiable roles as expressive markers that become closely associated with "the language we use" in CMC (computer-mediated communications)? ... Studies have observed that emoticons and emoji serve at least "paralinguistic" and conversational functions:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=linguistic+OR+paralinguistic+intitle%3Aemoticons

IMO:
When a familiar set of supplementary expressive symbols is suddenly replaced by a new set that is very different in style, content, and character, some users may find the change jarring -- not only because some dislike the new set for various reasons, but also because the sudden change may disrupt the established comfort and fluency of accustomed mappings of expressive roles that users had customarily assigned to the old symbols.
(Edited)
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David S. Issel

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Lucus, yes, it is basically 'forcing' when the original option to express ourselves has been removed and the only option is to change the way express ourselves or leave the site.

But, the second part of your post totally understands my point of view: Emoji is a language... not one that I care to speak.

Interesting thought: What if our use of emojis gradually becomes so extensive that we actually circle back to writing in hieroglyphics? 
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(closed account)

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Lucus, yes, it is basically 'forcing' when the original option to express ourselves has been removed and the only option is to change the way express ourselves or leave the site.
Speaking for myself, as I said: "if I don't like the way things are going, I am free to go elsewhere." For me, that is sufficient.
.
(Edited)
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Karen Godfrey

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I have also discovered about these TERRIBLE emoticons, that you cannot post them when on your phone or Ipad. They come up as question marks, or not at all. And when viewing them on Ipad, the new fat ones have a emoji inside them. Weird!!! These fat ugly gum drop looking new emoticons don't have any motion like the old ones did.
(Edited)
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cartman_1337

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That's funny, because they mentioned iPhone and iPad users specifically as one of the reasons they implemented the new ones.

However, from what I know of texting (Android though, so perhaps not entirely comparable), the codes for inserting an Emoji in a text is very different than the bracketed codes used by IMDb for an Emoji, so I never really bought that argument to begin with.
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Nasro Subari

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So, another reason for switching to these ****-**-****-"emoji", namely making them phone-compatible, is invalid?
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Nasro Subari

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Since when do fourth-grade Japanese schoolgirls make up the key demographic for IMDb?

I just continue to use the old code, hoping that people will remember the emoticons (not "emoji" [barf])
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Rebekah-lover

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I do the same.
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Rebekah-lover

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What are we supposed to do for [laugh]?
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(closed account)

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"... I thought your code above unnecessarily closed the tags ...."
Yep, that was clumsy of me.  Thanks for catching that.

"... I also found a bug in the emoji code.  It should not execute inside the [pre] tag ....
You're quite right.  (I too had noticed that.)  When an emoji tag is placed between [pre]...[/pre] tags (example: [pre][eyes][/pre]), then the emoji tag should not render the emoji, but currently it does. The [pre] tag is supposed to "preserve formatting" of text, without markup replacement.

(Perhaps we should've opened a separate thread for that bug report?)
(Edited)
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DrakeStraw

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I've already reported the [pre] tag bug to  muzzle, an IMDb programmer active on IMDb Information.
 
(Edited)
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Murray Chapman, Employee

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This is technically not a bug, but I can see why people think it is.

The emoji representations like [cat_face_with_wry_smile] aren't really markup, they are an input convenience for people whose platforms don't natively support emoji.  We could have had the emoji-picker just insert the Unicode character, but unless you've got a special font installed it will likely look like a box with hex characters in it.

When you post a boards message, any [unicode_emoji] tokens are translated to native Unicode characters before it starts looking for markup.  So a [pre] block is doing the right thing: it's showing what markup there is and leaving individual characters alone.

When you edit a message the native Unicode characters are translated back into the [unicode_emoji] tokens so it all looks symmetrical.

Note that on platforms that support Unicode emoji natively (iPhones etc) the [unicode_emoji] tokens don't appear.
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DrakeStraw

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It's more of an inconsistency than a bug.  I see the real shortcoming in using square brackets instead of something like this.{wink}  The emoji code looks like the other markup, so naturally people will expect it to behave the same way.

Is there a CSS file out on the web that we can use so the emojis we use will render the same everywhere?
(Edited)
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Murray Chapman, Employee

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It's easy to change because it's never stored in the database.

Maybe we should create a poll and see what people think.
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M O

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This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
The new Emoji are unattractive and unusable..


They look like they were created BY children, FOR children. What were
you people thinking? Trying to get something cheap? This isn't a step
forward; it's a step backward -- and cheapens the Board.
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(closed account)

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Well, this discussion is quieting down, so ... let's do some numbers:

Up to now, only 21 people have clicked to "Like" this thread. ... But we know that many more than 21 people have expressed a preference for the old emoticons.

In a reply above, someone estimated just "a few dozen" total complaints?

I've spent just an hour checking a few threads on a few popular boards, and I now know of over 24 dozen (288+) unique users who have expressed a preference to keep the old emoticons available. Since I only checked a few threads on a few boards, I would assume that my count of 288+ is probably far lower than the total number of users who may have expressed a preference to keep the old emoticons available.

Whether I'm right or wrong about that, we'll never know the total number of users who would've preferred to keep the old emoticons. ... Of course, the numbers don't really matter. The change is done. Some reasons for the change were explained in the announcement thread.

Everything that could be said has been said -- in the announcement thread, in various other threads on various boards, and finally here. It has been an interesting discussion. Thanks to IMDb for giving us a place to be heard.

Thanks also to the staff members who participated in this thread here on the aptly-named Get Satisfaction dot com. ... [EDIT] -- (Sorry, my mistake. No staff members participated in this thread here. Well, thanks anyway for letting us carry on the discussion amongst ourselves.) ;-)
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(closed account)

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Now that a staff member has replied (below), I hereby wish to "withdraw" my earlier quip (above) about lack of staff response.

(In retrospect, I should've added a word to that quip: Staff hadn't "yet" replied at that time.  I shouldn't have doubted that staff would respond in due course, as indeed they have.)
.
(Edited)

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