Memes

Will memes be permitted in the main discussion areas?

Even though I often like them, they're over-used, waste bandwidth, and often look unprofessional.

Do you mean memes or 'smilies' (aka 'emoticons')? The latter are those delightlfully cute little faces over there ---> when you are creating a new post.

I suppose I could shut them off

I mean memes. As in endlessly recycled gifs, often animated, used on pretty much every message board after originating on reddit, 4chan, somethingawful, or 9gag. I mean Orson Welles clapping, Doges, Overly Attached Girlfriend, and rage faces.

Ah. Well, to prevent *that* sort of thing (which I agree...yuck...) I'd either have to shut off attachments or modify the code that handles attachments to prevent any image types from being uploaded (or at least gifs).

Do you think there is any benefit from allowing a restricted set of attachments to be uploaded and attached to a post (e.g. PDF files?) -- or should we just say 'no' to any attachments?

I'm open to suggestions on this point...

Just having a rule against them would probably suffice. We're supposed to be professionals after all.

Not that tax practioners are a stodgy lot, interested only in esoteric tax concepts and code citations, but think about why we love TA so much - it's the exchange of information and learning that takes place. To the extent that little smiley faces and animated giffy things adds to the value then go for it. Otherwise, leave that stuff for the 98% of other internet chat sites for the masses that thrive on that stuff.

I agree. For now I am going to turn off attachments. I will also turn off image insertion, except for the members-only off-topic forum. If this becomes too much of a loss of function I can always turn it back on. You are correct, TA survived for years based on the quality of discussion...I think that's the more important aspect of a site like this.