The great emoji debate

[IonaMumsnet]

Afternoon everyone,

So: emojis. We've had a few questions about these over the last few days. Some of you love them and some of you loathe them. The truth of the matter is that they came into being as a side-effect of a technical fix that we did; we didn't set out to introduce them (and in fact, didn't expect you to discover them quite as quickly as you did ). On the question of whether they stay or whether they go, it's really up to you lot. We can get rid of them again; equally, if you like having them, we're happy for them to stay. Over to you ...

Milk

No, no, no. Please get rid of them. As much fun as it's been to read the pictionary thread, these emojis are wrong for mumsnet because:

1. They're anti-social. Emojis exclude some users from the conversation, as not all devices support emoji display.

1. They're vague. Unlike mumsnet emojis, there is no helpful text (e.g., the word 'grin' in brackets) to show what these keyboard emojis mean.**

1. They're a step backward. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but an emoji isn't. We've evolved to the point of using precise language to express sophisticated ideas and there's no reason to regress, even if mumsnet were to have its own version of the Rosetta Stone as a permanent sticky for the purpose of interpretation.

1. They're burdensome. Why make your members work that hard? Why set out to obfuscate? Do you mean to be so rude?

1. They're inefficient. I'd write more, but I'm running out of time. Gee, wish I had a little 'sands through the hourglass' emoji to use. Oh, wait--I can type the words faster than I could trawl through the emojis to find that "perfect" one. Result.

not to pick on frack, but what the hell is one to make of 🎢🍅? "Roller coaster tomato" means nothing to me though might be an amusing username

Alternatively, I could have simply posted this:

👎

But I hope my first post will be received more thoughtfully.

Wonderfully put Sprink.

Is this why there've been little black boxes all over the place recently? Daft...

And re the edit own post issue, surely the way ahead is for Preview Message to be the only option first time you try to post any message, and for it to take at least two clicks or whatever to get it to actually load.

Rollercoaster tomato?

I clearly don't use my phone enough because I've just been Googling and I genuinely have no idea how you use these damned things. Do you have to enable them or something? Or download a program? If you enable them, does it include emoji's every time you write a keyword or something?

Do you have an iPhone Thurlow?

Thurlow, ha! It's a post from FrackThoseCyclons at 9:29 today, which ended with (what I took to be) an emoji of a roller coaster and one of a tomato.

I was .

SauvignonBlanche, cheers.

Nope, milk. Android on a Sony phone.

OMG i come home from the pub and my laptop is possesed by huge emojis.

Hi all.

I'm embarrassed to say we had a glitch in the emojis for the last day or so which is why some of you have seen them as BIG and some have appeared as black and white. This should be fixed now if you'd like to check again on your various phones and computers.

As always, thanks for the feedback.

Normal MN ones fine, don't like the others.

Agree with Stasie's point about deleting posts after a year or two. There should still be sufficient threads left for people who need info on something.

I vote NO

Let those emojis in and it will be glittery tickers before we know it.
Bah humbug.

No thanks. They're quite cute but prefer not to have them on mn

It would be a real lowering of our standards to stoop to emoji use.

I didn't join many other forums exactly because of their reliance on emojis.

It messes with the look and feel of MN.

I run ad-blocker, and my experience of MN is a nice clean site. Emojis are making it... messy

Hell no to them anywhere.
If they're allowed, please not in thread titles.

Can't you fix the 'glitch' and get rid of them for good Shamtech?

👍👏 I like them.