FG

Removal of entitlements if posters misbehave, appeals to my inner 'Madame Lash'.

Use of colour background for inhouse quotes - excellent.

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs?"

30 paces at dawn my good man.

Yes to italics and discussion title editing, for all the reasons cited by other OLOers.

No to changeable text font, size and colour, and definitely no emoticons. Just look at a Polyboaz post written with only ASCII available. Can you imagine what it'd be like with animated smilies and customised text? I have an epileptic fit just thinking about it.

Speaking of which, and regarding the discussion topic, nothing undermines communication like posters posting under new and/or multiple pseudonyms. I wish the site would crack down on it.

yeah but if you wanted to get your point across why not just yell it out in bold....works for me in real life.... he he he but I find that if you want someone to know your a little pissed off then sarcasism really works well as a carrying medium.

now is that a gun slinging match I hear comming on? Im getting on ebay to buy front row seats now

Forrest, "Let but such formato-chromo browbeating be accompanied by the slightest breach of Forum rules, and these sought-for posting facilities could be progressively withdrawn from such offending users. Like Dreyfuss, offenders could be progressively stripped of their privileges, having if necessary their literary swords eventually publicly broken and being reduced to the indignity of plain text."

While I'd be keen to nominate some posters who should have reduced privileges implementing such an approach would require a substantial shift in editorial tactics. I'm very fond of the mostly hands off approach taken by our editors. I appreciate that when Graham or Susan post here they do so under the same rules are those who openly criticise their policies. No special priviliges for old timers such as you and I, the newby who joins today gets the same priviliges and will generally maintain them unless there is a very clear breach of rules.

Some may see bias in the choice of articles posted or which general discussions are allowed but it would be hard to put a case that individual posters are treated differently based on their interactions with the editors.

I expect perceptions would be quite different if the editors were regularly making judgment calls about the taste choices of posters with consequences to follow.

R0bert

"I can’t see why we OLOers shouldn’t have access to all the facilities available in Word, such as bold, italic, underline, different font sizes, types and colours..."

Ludwig,

Don't forget the spell checjker!

Great thread, Fractelle.

Yes a spell checker would come in handy, Rob.

I also agree with a previous poster that the very basic editing tools, bold, italics, etc - would aid communication.

No emoticons puhlease, they're always in your face.

What I would like, but is not essential, is a small avatar- no doubles, so that I'd be able to instantly recognise my favourite posters and avoid others.

I'd also want to second what RObert said, "the ability to reference links without having the whole link shown on screen (cutting down clutter)."

I actually wrote to GYoung a couple of weeks ago to suggest this.
I sometimes use TinyURL to shorten links, but can't always be bothered.