Bug 378606

closing it, uncommented?
I'm open for discussion... !

Replace with what? If you have images to propose, with a free license, please contribute them.

We have a rather eclectic mix of avatars to chose from http://i.imgur.com/eOZn8D8.png , anyone can suggest more images if they want to.

We are serious. Any distro can, if they choose, define WHAT kind of user they prefer. If you want to stick to "as serious as possible" you can just keep the B/W avatars. You can even remove every single avatar except one or two that you prefer.

We are a DE, we don't tell distros what they're user group should be and we have added up a few avatars that we felt like doing - our job is to ensure that.

Agreed, 
it's not your fault if distros choose silly avatar icons.

I mean, the samples you showed in http://i.imgur.com/eOZn8D8.png are the problem i am speaking of. No offence, but why are the blue/green icons the ones chosen by default (esp. the 'user' icon)?
What about a more 'technical' looking avatar/icon that is taken first?

See, you/the plasma team have come to great lengths choosing an appropriate style for the whole user experience. The icon sets, the themes, the colors... maybe not to everyones taste, but uniform (btw, i like it!)

And now, we start greeting a first time user to plasma with the blue/green user avatar? A hairless bloke with a big nose????
I have no problem choosing another avatar, but you should think of new users of the plasma DE and their first impressions. The 'other' DE's are a bit more on the 'serious side', you can select - even silly - images if you don't agree to the default avatar. But the default looks just suitable to the rest of the DE experience.

I completely agree with funny or silly avatar icon sets. Please keep them in the selection. I don't even mind the hairless bloke in the list. But give the users a fitting initial choice and don't rely on the distributions to provide proper avatars.

I mean, take the previous (<5.9.4) technical avatar image consisting of just circles. Clean, fitting to the breeze icon set. Just... OK. Not fancy, nothing too shiny. And gender neutral.

Even if you - as a user - wouldn't care about avatars you weren't forced to change it, because it was a technical thing and not disturbing. Now, every time you open the application-kicker menu or lock the screen, this blue/green avatar thingy grins at you.

I have the feeling, that now you push users to make an active approach into changing this.
If this was the intention, then you succeeded...


Please do understand: I am very happy with the new plasma experience, the modifications and the experiments and their implications. For example, it also took some time for the logoff dialog to become what it is today.
I see this avatar stuff pretty similar, it will change eventually into something proper.
But as far as i am concerned, i would opt for a 'breezy' looking avatar as a default. Something non-disturbing when you open menus or lock your screen. This shouldn't be too hard, should it? Just take the old one for starters

Anyway, thanks for the comments!
I didn't expect a discussion to start, so please accept my apologies if the initial bugticket was too harsh. But i think opinions need to be shared...

I'm not entirely certain which are the "technical" ones you refer - is it the B/W then thank you I made them. 
I rather disagree with you except on one point - the default avatar - I think that was just chosen more or less at random at the time and was the stock/base out of which the "famous people" avatars where made (Gandhi, Da Vinci etc)

That leaves us with the issue of which one to chose. B/W penguin?

Created attachment 104947 [details]
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Created attachment 104948 [details]
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I added screenshots of previous avatar icons, perfectly in harmony with breeze icon set. Something like this should remain the default, not some random choice out of a list. (just my 2 cents)

@Jens.. please add some penguins to the avatar list, would be fun! (seriously)

What I don't understand is where that icon is coming from. The places/user-identity and actions/user-identity are still the same, for some reason it now picks the applets/user-identity icon o.O

Also, the user.svgz still has the correct user-identity icon in there. Marco, any idea?

Ah, it has usesPlasmaTheme: false and because of its large size it picks the the huge blue one?

Ah, it has usesPlasmaTheme: false and because of its large size it picks the the huge blue one?

We had this discussion in the past already: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/53gth9/personal_opinion_please_dont_use_this_icon_as/

Apparently nobody could be found to work on a consistent more professional looking set of avatars.

IIRC that the neutral one was shown as default in the past was a bug, that got fixed by David.

I just searched for alternative user icons and found this:

https://openclipart.org/search/?query=user%20icon

There are a few good looking icons the represent a user. I wonder if anything speaks against using some of these icons to extend the gallery in the reddit post from the last commentor?

According to https://openclipart.org/may-clipart-be-used-comparison and https://openclipart.org/may-clipart-be-used-comparison it should be possible.

Ah, here are some cool and versatile penguins: https://openclipart.org/search/?query=user%20icon :-)

last link was wrong, sorry. Here is the correct one: https://openclipart.org/search/?query=penguin

I don't know for sure why your bug report / wishlist item is again closed without further comment slartibart70, but I assume it's because of your aggressive tone in the beginning and the unfriendly title. So if you, slartibart70, have a huge incentive to improve the current default avatar set (you're not the only one, who wants that), I would encourage you to open up a new wishlist item and start this one with a more friendly tone. I hope this is also in the interest of the other devs and designers.

In any case it would probably be better to not only open a new wishlist item (which might fail to gather the needed attention without the drama ;) ), but to directly create a new set of avatars, which you think are preferable. If you aren't a designer yourself, maybe you can organize like-minded designers for this project. We have several tools and communication channels to help you on that.

In general I would like to try to encourage people like you with a drive for something to join the development process instead of just closing them out because of some first imprudent harsh words.