Here's an example of what I'd refer to as "excessive use of emoticons": Personally, I cannot stand this. It's one thing to use large quantities of smiley faces and expressive emoticons in each individual post, but it's an entirely different thing to use them in a wild and un-organized fashion - or in other words, using them in a way that relays a sense of immaturity. Your thoughts?
Now unless I'm just screwing around with someone, I try to keep my emoticons down to about 1-2 per post. It just seems like any more than that screws up the post in my opinion.
I don't think it is really a problem on most sites. Can be tough if a person does it consistently. I guess the best course of action is to encourage moderation in all things good, including smilies.
I've tried limiting smileys/images per post to four, but that gets used up too quickly if a user wants to post a few photos.
It's something that I see the majority of younger members doing - rather than phrasing their excitement or enthusiasm in a text-based manner, they use an inordinate amount of emoticons. Let's say that a member can't come up with a way of writing what (or how) they're feeling. Rather than making an attempt to do so, they'll use smiley faces instead. Example: Bob wants to tell the community that he's excited about an upcoming movie. Rather than saying something along the lines of, "I'm ecstatic. I cannot wait to see this movie!", he decides to phrase the message in the following format: It's odd, yes, but I've seen it done.
Naw. As much as I love my smilies, and y'all know I do, I try not to overdo it I use them to express my mood, or emotion, or what I'm thinking at the time.
Chris, I really don':pt see th:oe problem.:p For srs, I don't like excessive use of emoticons but I don't usually run into any problems with this occurring, to my surprise.
I just use them as the emotion is evoked, so it's not a problem for me to make myself limit the usage. Although, I do love using smileys. I've never seen this to be a problem though. And, if done right, it isn't bad. In fact, it's entertaining. For example:
Blame Texting. Phones are notoriously hard to type on and many people take that to every thing instead of using real language.
Too many smilies don't bother me as much as other things. The admins of a site decide what smilies to use (unless external links are used) so you have some control.
Psh my post on the new smileys was to show how awesometastic I thought they were. If it's something like what I did when AA got new smileys, I don't mind.
