Quote:
The only problem with disabling emoticons is that you are then left with the ascii which can then sometimes makes no sense to anyone - like this, for example: [-X

not neccisarily. mirc should have just basic emoticons (if any) nothing like 8-) or ETC just ':):p' ETC. thats not hard to understand with or without the GFX

Quote:
As has been mentioned you have the problem of flooding - Yes, you could disable it and then all you'd see was the smiley colon/bracket, however, what if X user is sitting in the channel with smiley support on, and someone comes in and floods. A bunch of smile smile smile is much worse than ":):):)".

true, but then khled does something like 'Options -> IRC -> Messages' for the smiles.