Forum Cliches

I think it's about time we retire the fleur-de-lis icon as a forum marker that indicates whether there are new posts or not. Don't know what it is? Google it lol. You'll be like "oh yeaaaah! I see that everywhere!" There are so many other cool icon ideas,,,SO MANY. Use them aha!

You can talk about RP cliche plots, characters, admin tendencies, forum appearance and presentation, whatever!

I like my fleur de lis <.<

Heh yeah, a lot of people do :3

Which, I suppose, is the problem. Sigh. I'm unlikely to change them but if everyone else wants to I'd be cool with that

Yeah, I'm with you, I think they're great, but even the photoshop base have great ornamental icons to use!

Heh at least yours has all these shadows and lighting that makes it 3D XD...but the basic one color fleur is EVERYWHERE.

I went ahead and explored Pemma's suggestion of different ornaments heh...

Those are nice and definitely offer up an alternative.. you know.. for all the other sites who will take it so I can be cool and alone with my fleur-de-lis

I never noticed that before. Personally, a forum cliche that I try to avoid is sidebars.

On topic for real this time..

One of my big ones is the GIANT SUPER SIZED banners that take up the entire "above the fold" property on the site.

I also am not a fan of naming my OOC forums or Advertising forums in such a way that the person viewing my board has to stop and translate them from some slang or in game references to figure out where the heck they need to go.

Scantily clad woman as forum graphics.

Y'know, because I'll definitely want to join a game that has graphics that could be accused of being guilty of objectification of women. /feminist.

I wish I could like this a dozen more times.

Ohh my Glob, yes. Or models in general making their weird fish faces everywhere in high fashion clothing.

THIIIIISSSS. Especially when it has nothing to do with the site. :V

Gah. The one-coloured fleur de lis. I actually don't mind the fleur de lis, except when it's super big (and I'm talking like, 100x100 big). It's just way too huge and in-my-face. I think smaller forum markers are more attractive, though that could just be me.

Hmmm other forum cliches... I think maybe the songs-for-forum-names thing. That bugs me a lot. :/

- virgins, whores : advertising
- #111111 font on #000000 background in 4pt italic
- CAPSLOCK CAPSLOCK CAPSLOCK
- 'don't/do X or else our mascot will eat you'
- low-contrast layouts (usually dark themed)
- activity checks
- advertising directories
- pretty play-bys only
- cannon-only
- romance shipping

Word count rule to promote "literate, advanced" writing - rules riddled with mistakes and terrible style.

I will agree with the tiny fonts and banners that take up half of my very large monitor. I also have a problem where graphic sizes aren't standard to the size/width of the forum but simply a standard *no more then 500px* size. I like to be able to make my signature big enough to span the bottom of my posts because I like it that way.

With that though I think that the standard monitor size that people should be gearing for is larger then 1024x768 as well. Still gearing for an 800x600 forum width is ridiculous. I don't think that most computers nowadays can go that small. We are getting better, not worse.

To add insult to injury those that do this often do the tiny fonts too and it just ends up a big Too small for my screen so why bother thing. I've left a lot of potentially good sites simply because their site was too small for my monitor.

• Forum named after song/lyrics from a song.
• But that's not enough! The forum then gets a nickname or gets reduced to initials which are used all through the rules and information.
• Word mins
• Bad layout. Basically anything where I look for information that I know exists because I read it when I joined, but now I can't find it because everything is so badly organised across so many forums.