It's interesting to see how different trends in avatars emerge on a forum.. I once was a member of a forum with lots of parents of sick children... the trend there was to have their kid's face as their avatar. You hardly ever saw their faces. On another it was professional pictures, but recently one member started making stained glass images out of people's faces, so now everyone is using stained glass pictures. And here Garala started a mini-trend of avatars advertising your forum What's the current trend on your forum?

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite

Well each week we have an avatar contest so to speak, where our Graphics person picks a topic and everyone chooses a graphic to go along with the theme. They get vbux for participating which is always fun for them. Each week it's different and fun! We just did a 9-11 theme so everyone had patriotic avatars, next week will be something else...could be food, colors, hobbies, etc.

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My Parent Connection

I like that idea Cori I don't want to change things on the forum where people have been using pictures of their faces (and right now stained glass) because I think that's good for the community, but certainly I'd like to do something along those lines on forums where everyone's using the avatars provided for them.

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite

Thanks! I don't always participate, it just depends on the theme. Sometimes I find them boring or I have a special avatar that I want to use that week. For instance, this week coming up, I have a pregnancy avatar asking boy? or girl? because on Tuesday we get to find out the gender, so I wanted to celebrate that so to speak with a special avatar.

I don't blame you for not wanting to change something that works so well for your community. It might mess with the overall closeness of the forums.

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My Parent Connection

Good idea to get interest in a topic going through the avatars. Maybe the contest theme for the week could be babies

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite

well ately i ahve been seeing a lot of political flavored avatars, and some to provoke other members, they are crazy!!

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Philly Sports
Delaware Online
PA Forums

oh thank god they're not doing that on my site, I don't think I'd like tthe results!

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite

I'm glad most of my members are staying away from the political bs that can happen. It would drive me insane!

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My Parent Connection

same here Cori, but so far we seem to have an unspoken agreement on my forum not t go there... though there have been the occasional potshots at the other side, most people don't respond.

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite