Stop with single image replies.

[MexicanAnime]

Now, what I'm personally not against, are single-image posts that have text underneath that add to the conversation. If I posted a video of me doing the macarena, rather than just replying with only a gif displaying your disgust, you could post the gif with something below along the lines of "SERIOUSLY, you are a terrible dancer and I hope you never do this again." That would give me enough info to reply rather than chuckle at your disgust and move onto another thread.

I'd just like to point out that this is still totally okay as it's contributing to the discussion. This isn't a blanket ban on all images, or fun in general - just on the over-use of image-only replies.

You can have fun doing both. There's no fun in trying to make all your posts "SUPER SERIOUS" nor do I really care about the "quality of the posts" as if my posts were to be looked at by different judges. Do you really care about how other people/places perceive the forum that much? Nobody's hurting each other and there has been no previous drama other than the Zombie Riot mess. It's just pointless rules being enforced.

Nobody is claiming that people didn't have fun with them before. I'm sure there are many who did. That isn't the point though. As a whole, image-only posts bring down the overall quality of the site and for many, myself included, the desire to continue through a thread. As Dazz said, nobody is saying you have to make every post completely serious. You just need to put a little more than zero effort into them.

And as for caring what others think of the community, I'm not sure why you don't. I'm proud of the community we have here. For the most part, we haven't degraded into the same mess most other forums wind up in and I'd like to keep it that way. Building a good reputation can only help the site so I think it makes sense to do everything we can to keep up the quality here.

I've banned Arjahn for 24 hours. This isn't a joke.

Yes, I can very clearly read and that looks like the word "banned".

This is just unnecessary nitpicking. While "ban" does generally have a connotation of permanence, it doesn't necessarily have to mean forever. Would suspended have been a better word to use? Possibly, though we can suspend posting privileges without suspending access to the entire account so it's not completely accurate either. In this case, his entire account was prevented from accessing the site for 24 hours. I'm not sure how to make it any more clear.

It's not nitpicking. If you would have said suspended, I would have reacted the same. It's still him being banned (just not perma banned) over something so small when you could have just gone with a warning instead.

As for the earlier part, I like the community as well, but I don't give a crap about how some random neck beards or casuals precieve the forums as I know that they're good people and that we get along. Either way, if you're trying to get a good reputation from other people, then I can already tell you that this is not the way. Most other forums are fine (to an extent obviously) with both the image and chit chat situation, and when I informed a few if something like this were to happen iin other places, they said it was stupid and unnecessary.