No more chatbox emoticons

There have honestly been problems with the smileys on the chat since pretty much forever, such as:

1. People spamming them, causing lag.

2. BOUNCING HEARTS EVERYWHERE in certain conversations.

3. In Firefox (not sure if it still does this), having too many smileys or other images on the chat makes it refresh wrong.

4. A lot of them (i.e. Caramelldansen) seem to exist for absolutely no purpose aside from random spamming.

And probably some others I don't care to list right now.

Anyway, this poll: do you think we should keep the ability to post emoticons on the chat? I'm not entirely sure it's possible to disable them at all, but we're going to assume it is at the moment.

I have to agree with this, they do cause so much more grief than joy. Note that this is only on the chatbox, I thing they should stay on the forums because of how much easier it is to spot.

I think that the emoticons should be there though limiting the animated ones would be best. maybe just changing <3

Code:

 <3 with :heart:

would change allot just like how they changed

Code:

 from :3 to :meow:

I think this simple change would do alot from people that just want to use < 3

I couldn't agree more that they are annoying. Not only in the sense that they visually irk some people, but more importantly, the fact that they come up when you type the shortcut for them and you don't even want them there.

Although from a perspective from people who'd possibly like them, I'd at least say have a 'disable emoticons' option for the people who dislike them. That way, the people who like them will see them, and the people who don't like them don't have to see them.

Although, I agree with Dog that the emoticon text shortcuts should be changed too (if the emoticons should stay). As I noted earlier, they are annoying when they pop up when you don't want them too.

Also, I happened to also notice that some people post emoticons not from the chatbox, but by img code. Probably should disable that AT LEAST to prevent over expanding bandwidth.