People often ask me what the greatest flaw with TFK has been in recent years and my answer is always simple:
While the common emoticon or smilie is useful in capturing an immediate emotive reaction to a post or incident, it leaves one with the impression that the emotion portrayed is reflective of the poster’s overall state of mind. This assumption is not always correct and in a world where cyber-bullying and identity theft are very real threats, we can’t afford to have our moods misrepresented online.
To address this deficiency I’ve been working hard with Gulaad and BeTimberin to develop a new system that would facilitate members capturing and displaying their general state of mind, divorced from any one particular post. As Gulaad put it eloquently at one of our meetings - “Can we not seethe at the folly of a particular poster while remaining giddy in general terms?”
So we have devised a TFK Moods system. Posters can now update their mood (which is beautifully displayed on the sidebar of each post and on each member’s profile page) as often as they wish to convey their current emotional state to the members and guests of TFK.
Obviously mere text alone would be insufficient to capture the complex and sophisticated moods of TFK members so we’ve opted to marry an image to each mood. In order to maintain a consistency in presentation we opted to use the most complex and sophisticated man in Ireland as the benchmark image for those moods. It’s an honour to have Mr Delaney’s image on TFK and I do hope you’ll all be pleased with this new feature.
