Forums General Discussion Image question

If you add a *.bmp or a *.jpg file as a "photo" in a channel, then you see the picture in the right upper corner, and my question is this, i want to know if mirc see any color as transparent in a *.bmp or *.jpg .. cos if you have a image you dont just get the picture you want, you also the the color that are in the background of that pic.. and you cant asume that every user of mirc have the same background color in the channels/querys and so on.. any way to work around this? cos i cant make a image that have every possible color settings for channels and so on.. it would be many images befor i was done..

Transparent colors only work in .gifs.

In additon to Hammer's response, .gif's don't currently work in mIRC, so you can't (yet) have what both you and I would love to see.

ok thnx.. i just have to wait for the next version of mirc to be relesed then.. and hope that it suport .gif

.png also supports transparency. I don't see why mIRC shouldn't (if it doesn't already) support .png (and .mng for that matter) seeing as how it is a 100% free format.

Oh and about .gif being supported in the next version, don't count on it, .gif is not a free format. It is covered by patents which makes it illegal for the users (not Khaled, the people who use mIRC) to run mIRC without paying a royalty to Unisys.

I don't think there would be any problem with mIRC reading gifs. AFAIK the royalties are only required for the algorithms to write gif files, not to read them. Quite frankly though the patents have been so damn annoying I wouldn't use GIF files again even if they were made free. PNG/MNG should definitely be supported.

You might be right about reading, I don't know. But in any case, .gif is no longer an internet standard, .png is the new image standard and .mng is the new animated image standard. Why use old technology like a .gif when .png offers so much more and it's free?

As the owner of a fairly big website (around 100 pages) I can answer that. Simple matter is that GIF is a much smaller format allowing pages to load quicker. The big downside to GIF is the quality of the image where more than 256 colours are present and at times even the ballsy Photoshop cannot dither enough to smooth out transitions between colours, which is where PNG comes in. We all know that PNG is a far better quality format and for photographs it craps all over GIF three times over but where possible most webmasters still use GIF where it is possible to get away with using them. Having said that I still use JPG alot for photos through force of habit though have been known to use PNG at times and will probably use it more often as time goes on. One thing is for sure though, if you are right when you say that PNG is now the standard, webmasters are being dragged kicking and screaming to use it. It is definitely a very good format though, better quality than GIF and better quality than JPG.

Another reason (beyond the bloat) PNG hasn't picked up popularity is that Internet Explorer doesn't support its alpha transparency... making the format pretty much useless as an alternative to GIF.

On another note, June 20, 2003 was "GIF Liberation Day" day here in the US... the LZW patent is set to expire elsewhere in 2004.

Currently it seems that mIRC is affected the same way. I once tried a PNG in mIRC and where the transparency was meant to be I got a black background..

Yes i know.. but i made it the "hard" way made a image for every color in the color list "the 16 default ones".. then i made the script look for:

if $color(bakground == %var) { load this image }

and if i change color it set the color mode and it set the image that match that color you can work around anything if u want to

That would work well but if you distribute the script then it would be a bit 'heavy'.

Yes it is, but with the mIRC.exe and everything its up in 1 meg.. so i cant say its that big, i will make it so they can only DL the script, and then it wont be more then 870 kb .. so cant say it is so heavy

i have around 30 images in it by the way.. but when mirc suport jpg/png, then i dont need to use bmp :tongue:

It would all depend on the script. I've seen scripts distributed with mIRC, as about 99.9% of them are even though it's against the licence and some are under 2MB while others are upto 10MB. The few scripts I have seen distributed without mIRC range from a few hundred KB upto about 6MB. It would depend on how 'pretty' things are and depend on the amount of third party contributions such as DLL files and DOS/Windows based games are included.

Well as the owner of a "fairly big website" you are grossly misinformed. The average .png image is SMALLER than the corresponding .gif image. Where you got your information from, I don't know, but when I convert png's to gif the filesize increases. When I convert gif to png the filesize decreases, similar results are reported by numerous online image groups.

Independant evidence:
scantips.com:
"[PNG is] perhaps about 25% smaller than TIF LZW for 24 bit files, and perhaps about 10% to 30% smaller than GIF files for indexed data. "

burnallgifs.org references a letter written by Christopher Wright (an online-cartoonist) who states:
"Switching over to the PNG format has given me about a 4K reduction in size per panel. "

Additionally, burnallgifs.org references a post by Drake Emko (another web cartoonist) that states:
"PNG images compress more efficiently than GIFs. The smaller file size you can achieve with PNG may be the most important reason to switch to this format."

Want some hard evidence rather than opinions?
http://www.algonet.se/~otsu/pngcomparison.html

Note the size of the compared checkerboard image. .gif was at 0.99kb, where as .png was at 197bytes. Thats a signifigant difference.

Ok, now you might be saying "Well these tests were conducted by just random people! That doesn't mean anything!"
So lets look at some test results from Yale University (http://www.library.yale.edu/wsg/docs/image_pro_con/imgprocon.htm):
"[PNG] typically compresses images 5-25% better than GIF."

http://www.oit.umass.edu/publications/at_oit/Archive/spring00/jv_compress.html also contains a very in-depth and accurate description of jpeg, gif and png, and it also states that png compresses files smaller.

So if you want to say .gif is smaller than .png, thats fine, but all the evidence suggests otherwise.

Oh and to rogue, who mentioned about IE's lack of alpha transparency support. Yes you are right, IE does not support this, however neither does gif. So why does that make png useless? It's not like if you use gif you can use alpha transparency, so your argument doesn't make any sense to me at all. It's like saying you have a choice between A and B, B has signifigant advantages over A. However, both A and B lack a feature. Therefore you should use A. Well A doesn't have the feature either, so all you're doing is losing out on all the added benefits that B would provide. That makes no sense at all...

I changed the icons in the bar on mirc, and thats why i send it with the script, it have a matching theme to the rest of it.. but its a chame when you find script that ppl want to get paid for if you using them..

Where you got your information from, I don't know, but when I convert png's to gif the filesize increases.

I get it from the programmes I use. Photoshop and Photo Editor.

At the same time I just made a PNG with Photoshop and saved it at 6.82KB and then coverted to GIF which saved at 2.97KB. I then saved the GIF back as a PNG and it saved at 5.32KB. There's every chance it would depend on what settings you use in whatever image editing programme you use whether it be Photoshop or something else.

I'm not saying you are completely wrong here, what I am saying is that it will be many years before webmasters shake off GIF images. If you go to any corporate website the chances of finding JPG and GIF there are very good. For the record I didn't follow the links provided because it's obvious that you wouldn't provide anything contrary to what you mentioned but what Yale University (where-ever that is) finds as a result of some experiment is clearly not being used in practice.

In light of this, I visited my own sites plus the two you own and there are GIF files a-plenty and 0% PNGs that I happened to have seen. Our choice of format simply happens to be reflected on a massive scale all around the world. PNG will one day takeover but it will probably take as much time as DVD did to claim Numero Uno spot from tape.

gif owns png when it comes to animation. a statistic all of those sites failed to mention.

With network and storage bottlenecks decreasing and cpu bottlenecks increasing, what might seem like savings today may become a hinderence in a few years, as png undoubtedly uses more cpu to render than gif.

Also, a GOOD gif compressor (such as GifConstructionSet, a licensed LZW application) usually produces smaller gif files than photoshop indexed png files, in my experience.

I believe every image format has it's place, and yes png has a growing nitch among internet users and photographers. I enjoy png for its 24bit lossless compression, the best of both gif and jpg, and personally hope to see digital cameras switch over to it. If you want to be revolutionary, please support open formats like png and mpg... but do remember to boycott mshit formats like wmv and wma, too.

For compatibility, I'll stick with .gif for web graphics for the next couple years.

- Raccoon

Probably because PNG isn't an animation format? MNG is however. I can't say how it compares to GIF because I've never used it. AFAIK it isn't supported in many programs - yet. That will almost certainly change in the space of a year or so.

Why on Earth would higher CPU demand from PNGs be an issue in a few years (if that's even true)? It's not an issue now, in a few years processors will be even faster, why will it be an issue then? Bandwidth is a much scarcer resource than processing power.

MNG is supported by Netscape 7 and above, and there is a plugin for IE to add support. According to most statistics I've read, MNG has features that animated gif's can't. For example, you can use alpha transparency in the animated image, a feature gif lacks.

Yes, you're right, the thing is it is highly dependant on the settings. I don't know or Photoshop handles it, but in GIMP there is a "compression level" slider, the more I increase the compression (which is lossless) the smaller the image becomes. Also, you can index png just like you can gif. I created a black image (256x256) it was 328bytes, then I indexed it to 2 colors and it dropped to 156bytes. Then playing with a few more png settings I reduced it to 103bytes. Using gif the smallest I could get it was 384bytes. Why? Because the bit depth of a gif is ALWAYS 8 bits (256 colors). Where as, with png, since the image was just one color, I reduced the bit depth to 1 bit (2 colors). So the savings is signifigant when using png for simple images that use less than 256 colors.


Well there is a reason why I didn't provide any evidence to the contrary... I couldn't find any! I found _one_ site (which I could only find cached on google, because the site itself is gone) http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:R6I...mp;amp;ie=UTF-8 Where they mentioned _one_ specific (and very rare) case where a gif will be smaller than a png. That was the only evidence I could find that said a gif could be better than png. Every organization I could find said use png, not gif. The only other cases I can find where people say png is larger than gif is when you are using a 24bit png image (true color) but of course it is obvious that a png storing 24bit information (which most pngs on the web do not) will be larger, so I didn't consider that a weakness since gif can't even support 24bit color. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, I'll gladly read through it, but I could not find any on my own. When I search google for "gif smaller than png" "gif better compression than png" "image format comparison" "png jpg gif" all I find is people reporting how much better png is than gif and jpg. Oh and Yale University is an Ivy League school that is probably in the top 10 universities in the US and probably in the top 25 in the world.



Well I own more than 2 sites. If you look at solarstats.net you'll notice that all except 2 images are png (and those two images will be converted within the next couple of days). codemastr.com has 3 images (which is hardly files a-plenty) 2 of which are gif's, those will also be converted in the next few days. The only site you could have been referring to would be unrealircd.com, and I'm not the webmaster of that site. If I were, it would all be png by now. Oh and the only reason the pics on codematr.com are gif was because at the time, my png plugin for GIMP wasn't working so I couldn't create a png image, I've since fixed the problem or else it would have always been png.

Let me rephrase what I said... since IE doesn't support PNG's 8 bit alpha channels which allows the images to be semi transparent, any transparent area of a PNG will display at 100% opacity. At least with GIF, so called "binary transparency" is rendered by IE.

Here's a cludgy work-a-round for IE if anyone is interested... wanted to include the link in my original post, but couldn't find it at the time.

I'd also have to agree with Watchdog when it comes to my own personal experiences working with GIF and PNG file sizes... I'm sure PNG should be smaller theoretically but I have yet to see it in my own graphics. I had heard that Adobe Photoshop wasn't very good at PNG compression so, on more then one occasion, I tried other graphic utilities and ended up with the same results.

PNG probably is better for certain types of images but I've yet to find what that might be.

Image transparency for a png image (the full transparency, not alpha transparency) works perfectly for me in IE 6. That file contains transparency... It displays perfectly for me in IE6 and NS7. You're right, if you have a semitransparent area, it will display at full opacity, but if you have a full transparent area, it will display as transparent, which allows it to function with all the ability gif has. And for the file sizes, as Watchdog mentioned, my sites did use gif. When I switched to png, and using some compression techniques, and limiting the color palette, I saw an average of a 20% decrease in image size on every image. For example, that validcss png above is 889bytes. The exact same image as a gif is 1211bytes. If you don't believe me, look at the file sizes of that one (gif) and the one posted earlier in this post (png).

Okay, so what does that prove? It proves that one programme can compress a PNG smaller than a GIF.

Quote from PNG Homepage: PNG was designed to be the successor to the once-popular GIF format, which became decidedly less popular right around New Year's Day 1995 when Unisys and CompuServe suddenly announced that programs implementing GIF would require royalties...

Okay so we have some greedy corporate entities that sought to make a fast quid from the so-called "Once popular" GIF format. However when I visited ten popular Australian websites and ten popular US websites I found that GIF was still the overall favourite for the webmasters of every single one of those sites with photos being in JPG format:

NineMSN - GIF
Microsoft - GIF
Google (AU) - GIF
Hotmail - GIF
Yahoo (AU) - GIF
MSN - GIF
Google (Int) - GIF
Yahoo (Int) - GIF
News Corp (AU) - GIF
Commonwealth Bank - JPG

Thanks to Redsheriff's stupid automatic redirection system I can't find the top ten US sites so I'll guess some.

CNN - GIF
MSNBC - GIF
Altavista - GIF
General Motors - GIF
C Net - GIF
US Stock Exchange - GIF
CBS TV Network - JPG
Ford - GIF
RCA - GIF
RIAA - GIF

And the PNG home page has the audacity to call GIF "once popular"?
*Watchdog rolls on the floor laughing.

And how do they explain the claim that GIF became "less popular" due to the royalties slapped on programmes that recognise the GIF format? Quite plainly they can't. Why? Because every imaging editor that I know of, from the ordinary upto the industry standard all recognise and manipulate GIF just as they do PNG, BMP, JPG, TIFF and many others. Why? because that's what people want.

The point is that PNG/MNG are superior file formats in every way. Smaller, more adaptable, more features, etc. So, for future development it makes sense to use and support PNG/MNG rather than GIF. Whether there are existing sites still using GIFs is totally irrelevant, thre's a good chance the webmasters on a lot of those sites aren't even aware of the royalty issues involving GIFs, or that PNG/MNG is around and are altogether better file formats. Even if they do, depending on the number of images stored, the storage method, and the competency of the webmaster, converting all the image files on a single large site could be a very time consuming ordeal.

Very few open source and free programs still have GIF write support. You can argue all you want (and I'm sure you will) that commercial programs are far more popular, but that simply isn't the case. With a huge proportion of programs being developed without GIF support, and huge open source backing for the PNG/MNG formats, there can be little argument that GIFs are on the way out and PNG/MNG are on their way to the top.

I'll tell you why. You are viewing popular as "being used by 20 websites" the PNG are viewing popular as "being supported by international organizations" The W3C endorses PNG and encourages people NOT to use GIF. The NIST (I believe it's the NIST) has adopted PNG as the official image standard, the US DoD (Department of Defense) has adopted PNG as an official standard, etc. You'll quickly find that most organizations that adopt standards for image formats have adopted PNG, rather than GIF. Again, you're viewing popularity as 20 sites, they view popularity as organizations that represent the opinions of millions.

And every image program recognizes and can manipulate gif? Really? Well GIMP, which is pretty much THE image editing program for Linux... it can't manipulate gif files. You assume just because the programs for Windows can manipulate a GIF that means all can. Also, many 3D rendering software programs can not save as a GIF (because GIF doesn't support enough colors), I could name maybe a dozen 3d programs that won't save as a gif. Just because the people want something doesn't mean they get it. I WANT a million dollars, I WANT a new car, I WANT a new house, I WANT a new job... well guess what? Just because I want that stuff doesn't mean I have it.

the US DoD (Department of Defense) has adopted PNG as an official standard

Oh great, we can see some combat hardware in the latest and greatest imaging format.

Tell me something... Why have you and Starbucks brought up the Gimp v's Photoshop yarn when it's imaging we are (were) discussing. Perhaps it's one if your classic diversion tactics. The irrelevant thing here is one imaging programme being the bees knees, the fact I raised in respect of the popularity of GIF images is THEE entirely relevant issue. Sure, I only listed 20 sites but they represent a fair chunk of the world's page impressions which makes both the use and user-acceptance of GIF far far far far higher than that of PNG. For some reason you think I am bagging PNG - I'm not and have already said that at times I use it. But the facts speak for themselves, whatever site you visit the chances of a GIF image rather than PNG being displayed is enourmously high.

I am aware of the W3 endorsement of PNG, I refer to W3 when coding my own websites and recently finished one that complies strictly with XHTML1.1. Okay, that's no big deal - I'm just proving my awareness of the organisation itself. Having said that no standard is a standard until the specification becomes widely accepted in practice and with the representation of the humble PNG image on most websites, that is clearly not the case.

Now, if you want to keep spinning the yarn about freeware then visit their websites and see what imaging format they use, GIF isn't it? FreeBSD, Gimp, Linux.com, Apache, Samba, VNC, BitchX, Sendmail, SourceForge.net and OpenOffice... Yep, all of them.

Yes, the DoD only makes hardware. Ever heard of a little project known as ARPANet? Maybe you're more familiar with its new name, it now goes by "The Internet"? That was created by an agency known as ARPA (now known as DARPA). Care to guess what the "D" stands for? Yeah, thats right "Defense" as in the DoD. Oh and please don't say "I just went to dod.mil it uses gif" because you'd be right, however thats just because the change hasn't taken effect yet.



It's really obvious you are in politics... You have a way of turning bullsh*ting into an art. When did I turn it into a PS vs GIMP debate? When did I say "GIMP is the best program in the world?" When did I say "the fact that GIMP doesn't do it makes PS much better?" I DIDN'T. Why did I talk about GIMP?



You clearly know of GIMP. So you lied. Not all of the image editors you know of support GIF. So don't take my words, and try and turn it into a flamewar because I responded to something you said. Now anyway, since you had to be a wise-ass. You're right the GIMP website does use GIF. Oh wait, I guess you just went there and right clicked the logo right? Didn't take the time to read the "The current design of this site was created more than five years ago. It looked good at that time, but both the web and the GIMP have evolved since then?" Of course not. Because if you had, you would have seen the provided link to the new GIMP website http://mmmaybe.gimp.org/. Care to guess what image format that uses? Yup that's right, PNG. What's my point? Sure you can find open source sites using GIF, and most of them are probably using it illegally, however I can just as easily find many using PNG.

The main reason GIF superceeds PNG and JPG, is that it's so much easier to say!

GIF is pronounced simply Jiff, while JPG Jay·Pee·Gee and PNG Pee·En·Gee take considerably much more effort to pronounce, and sound down-right silly when used in verbal conversation.

Us geeks already have enough trouble trying to explain mIRC Em·Eye·Arr·See without sounding childish or demeaning, that some have even resorted to Merk.

I think if PNG just had a vowel in it, the format would be more readily embrassed by all.

- Raccoon

It's really obvious you are in politics...

I'm an engineer (no... not a train driver, a proper engineer) so you arn't even close, as per your arguements re: PNG files when you know damn well that due to the format being eight years old, webmasters are being dragged kicking and screaming to use it.

On that note I have finished in this thread, I have better things to do such as eating a meal - damper, sheperds pie and a side-serve of roast veggies is only 5 mins away. Sorry if I have just made you hungry. :tongue:

It's fun to see how 1 litle Q can grow so big as this have but i must say the reading here is realy great, im not good with images and what they are used for so it's a bit of interesting reading.. thnx dudes

Umm.... No? "JPG" is pronounced "jay peg" (the actual format is JPEG, not JPG), and "PNG" is pronounced "ping".

Ah so you're even a bigger liar? You've said numerous times on these forums that you are involved in AU politics... Guess I now know never to believe a word you say, since you make so much up, you can't even keep up with your lies.

Discussions here can be a great source of learning about all sorts of things. Now if only it could be done without including tossing insults around. <---- not so subtle hint to tone it down y'all.

I can't see where I in any way mentioned GIMP or Photoshop. All I did was state a fact that open source software in general doesn't support writing GIF files and that it forms a substantial portion of the imaging market. I also gave a simple suggestion as to why there are still so many GIF files in use on the web - you seem to have ignored that part.

Raccoon: Maybe it's just me but I've always pronounced GIF with a hard 'G', (as in Kathy Lee Gifford).

Since you called me a liar twice (..and it might do your standing here some good to take note of Parabrat's advice about mudslinging :tongue:) it requires yet again that I correct your inaccuracies. I have never ever once said that I was involved in politics anywhere, whether it be on this forum or any other. What I might have said is that I follow politics and that can mean a variety of things, all except participation of course. Watching parliamentary debates and watching "Question Time" is a spectator sport, not involvement.

Now I haven't muckraked you, kindly refrain from doing it to me. Or is it that I am the only one here that respect the opinions of others without the cheapshots?

Call me bigheaded if you will, but I feel that my integrity is well above that of a liar or a politician.

For the record and with respect to pronunciation I don't think there is a correct way to convert a file extension to a word. That said I say JIF, BITMAP, TIF (as in lovers tiff), JAYPEG and PEE EN GEE.

GIF is still the most popular image format on websites, both old and new though. You know it is and cannot prove otherwise.

With all due respect to Parabrat's post, I don't feel I am mudslinging at all. I'm simply quoting facts, for example you lied again. "On that note I have finished in this thread" and then *poof* you post to the thread yet again. If you want to say "PNG" is NOT pronounced "ping" then the answer is simple, you're wrong. http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/#history. That was written by the people who created the PNG format and they say it is pronounced "ping". Isn't it generally the right of the author to create the name for the creation? Therefore if the author says it's pronounced "ping" I don't care what you're opinion is; it is pronounced "ping". You deciding "PNG" is pronounced "pee en gee" is the same as me deciding "dog" is pronounced "do gee." Just because I say "well I say it like this" doesn't mean I'm right.

And you said you're not involved in politics? I guess I need to prove it to everyone, to show I'm not merely making things up, that I am quoting facts. https://forums.mirc.com/showflat.php?Cat=...=true#Post28787
A quote contained in that post: "I have [made press releases] actually because I was and still am a strong participant in the anti-republican push in Australia." Anti-republican push? Sure sounds like political involvement to me. So either that post was a lie when you said you were involved in politics, or this one is a lie when you said you aren't. So if Parabrat, or anyone else for that matter, wants to criticize me for what I say, well then I have to ask, why is it if I (or anyone else) makes fun of pheonix, MTech, etc., people say "He/She is right, you have proved yourself to be an idiot" and no one ever gets angry about it because there are facts to back it up. Well I've now provided 2 concrete examples of him lying, and then when confronted about the lies, he denys it all together. That sounds like someone who can be accurately deemed to be a liar.

Since when is participating in a national debate on rebublicanism part of politics? Politics resides in a legislature and has nothing to do with constitutional matters. So I haven't lied to anyone here. Since you do not live in a dominion you would have absolutely no idea what I was even speaking about in the post you referred to, no idea at all. The fact that you referred to it and are confusing parliamentary debate and the process of law making with issues relating to the reigning monarch (who unlike in the American system of Government is NOT a political figure) proves what I said there and right here to be correct.

Sadly for you though, you will probably keep pushing this, yet another of your diversions, because you copped a mental thrashing re: GIF images. When you are proven wrong you always resort to personal conflict and diversion tactics, perhaps you are the political aspirant here?

Which part of "Why can't we all get along?" are you having so much difficulty understanding? Please tell me and I'm quite sure I can increase your understanding of the concept.

No one really cares how you pronounce GIF/JPG/PNG, or how anyone else does, for that matter. Is your telling me I'm wrong going to alter how I pronounce GIF with a hard G (like many other people in the world), even though the folks that created it, like "choosy mothers", choose "Jif"? Not a chance. I think it's interesting to hear how others pronounce acronyms or file extensions, but I lose no sleep over it...nor do I bother telling they are wrong (it might very well be that my pronunciation is wrong). Some folks call .bmp files "bump files" while others are quite comfortable calling them "bitmapped files" or just "bitmaps."

Many people pronounce URL as "earl", other spell it out (I do). Khaled says "Em-Eye-Are-See"; I say "merk". Does he understand me when I call it "merk?" Every time. Linus Torvalds, the creator of linux, says "LEE-nooks"; most of the rest of the world uses "LIN-ux" or "LY-nux". Do we all understand each other? Fairly well, actually - as well as anyone can be understood by normal people when discussing something as complex and convoluted as flavors of UNIX and their close relations.

A lie is an intentional misrepresentation of what is known to be true by the speaker at the time the statement was made. An opinion cannot be a lie unless the speaker is deranged; that opinion may (or may not) be an uninformed one, the correction of which might (or might not) cause the speaker to alter their opinion.

You have been proven wrong in these forums before; you will be again. I have been proven wrong and will be again. That trend will continue. (That doesn't mean we were lying when we said what we did.) There is absolutely no reason to assign generic names to people, however much you might believe them to be true. Did I disagree with you when you were calling pheonix an idiot for the continous and consistently incorrect posts he was making? No, I agreed with you completely because those posts proved themselves; you were merely commenting on what was blatantly self-evident. However, I did not make the same deragatory comments you did because there is always the chance he might learn from his mistakes. Has pheonix improved? Yes, I believe he has dramatically improved recently.

I'm extremely tired of you and Watchdog (this applies to both of you, as well as to several others here) bickering with each other. I quite enjoy when you are both bringing meaningful content to any discussion. When it breaks down into mudslinging, muckraking and flamewars (and most especially when the thread gets dramatically off-topic to the detriment of the thread), it's time to cease it. Why do you think so many threads have had to be locked? Because often times the thread of the discussion has deteriorated into petty self-aggrandizement to the point that the thread is no longer helping anyone, which IS why we are here, after all.

Please continue to provide the wonderful content and lose the derogatory attitudes that have been tarnishing the posts. I very much dislike editing someone else's post because my editing can often change the original intent of the author, but I can, have and will do so again. Further such posts will be edited or deleted as they are found by a moderator. Continued abuse and flagrant disregard of netiquette will be treated accordingly.

I completely understand it. I also realize that it is a ficticious idealism. Therefore I would rather not waste my time doing something that I know can not be done.

i think he means, you can state your opinions without sounding so ignorant/vicious

Yes I'm aware of what he meant. But as I said, when was the last time you saw a post that insulted you getting deleted/modified? More often than not you see the moderators joining in. I don't see why there should be a double standard here...

never, but that doesnt stop him asking.

G'day Hammer,

Your comments are duly noted. I agree with all of your post and I realise that what you are seeking is entirely achievable. I am happy to help in this regard.

-Do note that i did NOT edit your posts in this thread. I felt that however inflamatory your use of the word "liar" was, removing it could have led to greater potential misunderstanding/bickering. I failed to see how it had anything to do with the discussion to begin with, couldnt care less what anyone's pronounciation is or what their interpretation of "political involvement" is, (and i doubt the original poster does either), thought it over the edge, but i didnt delete the posts involved. Nor did i specifically call you to task for it, hoping the general reminder to tone it down would be sufficient. I find it interesting that rather than Watchdog demanding to know why i allowed someone to call him a liar (which could be considered name calling), you respond to "y'all tone it down" feeling criticized. As for your attack on me, when there is a specific response or lack thereof you find questionable, feel free to pm me about it. In most cases i will be more than happy to explain my rational to the extent that it doesnt intrude on someone else's right to privacy and consideration.

-i have in fact edited or deleted MANY posts insulting pheonix (with and without specific name calling), and warned posters that there are polite ways to point out someone's inaccuracies be it in the thread or by pm. There are also borderline things i leave in a post for multiple reasons based on the circumstances.

- I have often suggested two ppl take their dispute private rather than inflict it on the rest of us. None of us being perfect, we have all skirted the edge of rude on occasion. When i am pondering editing, i try to take a lot of factors into consideration. I consider there to be a difference between such comments as:
Thats stupid vs You're stupid
Thats iditotic vs You're an idiot
Stop posting inaccurate answers vs Wrong again you jerk

-personally i happen to feel that it IS realistic to expect ppl to be capable of disagreeing without resorting to insults, name calling, and profanity. You dont have to like someone or their opinions to behave with common courtesy.

-i fail to see how asking everyone ("y'all" being a southernism referring to everyone, altho perhaps more properly stated as all y'all) to tone down their responses is indicative of a double standard. Nor do i see how that is critical of only you specifically. In fact, i meant it as a reminder about posting in general, not just this thread in particular, since all too many threads (like this one) go from informative to bickering and sniping.

-quite honestly i dislike seeing productive discussions turned into a waste of time due to pointless bickering, regardless of who starts/continues it. with all the knowlege so many posters (including you) have to share, why on earth bother arguing over petty irrelevant things?

I wish I had principals like you when I was in school, ParaBrat... with your infinite patients to disassemble the most childish of bickerings we throw at you, instead of just revoking our recess and making us stay after school.

Your kids must be well behaved. If you don't have any kids, you should get some while you still got the nack.

Keep up the good work, and sorry for contributing with my troll that started the Jiff vs Gee·Eye·Eph debate. I thought people would see through the humor and pettiness of it.

- Raccoon

/me chuckles and says thank you for the kind words, they're much appreciated.

*ponder*

here... *tosses a cookie to the masked critter*
(chocolate chip, NOT peanut butter)

If Parabrat was like my headmaster she'd be wandering around with an online strap or cane ready to whip us into line, such were the old days.

Having said that both Parabrat and Hammer are good moderators and I think the mIRC forum is a better place with them here.

I'd like a chocolate chip cookie too as all the others hurt my teeth.

aww ty from both of us, its ever so nice to read kind words!

dont need a cane, i have a whip <eg>

Brat tosses a chocolate chip cookie to the WatchingDog (not to worry, i dont share the peanutbutter cookies)