I'm thinking of coding this up as a mod for the old dastardly Codebase from the Black Swamp, but an Elky version could be fun too.
The basic idea is when you get idiots who want to wind the staff up with their avatars and signatures, you do evil things to them that they can't control. The way I did it originally was via a secondary membergroup, so that all displayed membergroups don't look any different but the signature magically changes to this:
(http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/images/fingersig3.png)
That had rather a good effect on clowns that wanted to out-macho the staff. :D
Anyway, this was done via manual template and Sources edits, with no admin interface, but a more user-friendly version with a few admin inputs (for avatar, sig, and group) could be a fun thing to have. It doesn't need any permissions stuff, and doesn't need any other options, so should be pretty light on code.
Not having ever tried doing a mod for teh Elk, this might be a fun and easy one to start with.
Ah messing with the troublesome users is indeed a fun!
I added the Misery addon http://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=1907.0 (based off a phpbb/vb/ips) which gives targeted users a fun site experience. Never thought about changing the avatar or signature that others see (they of course would see their own) .. that is dastardly!
Look forward to what you come up with :)
I hadn't actually thought of making them see their own. That's a possibility. I can see pros and cons with it.
Pros are: initially they wouldn't know what was happening, and everyone else would be laughing at them. There's a juvenile fun aspect to this.
Cons are: more conditionals, so more processing, so not as good for performance. Also, someone would be sure to alert them to the changes anyway, and they could easily see what was going on by checking out their posts as a guest. So, not really as sneaky as it sounds, in practice.
At the moment I'm just inclined to let everyone see the borked avs and sigs. Let's face it: if they can see it even when logged in, every time they post, it has to be more annoying for them. :D
Oh and I did check out the thread for the Misery add-on. I like that too.
I was thinking guests just see the regular avatar, you would have to be logged and !== to get the swap. But your right, it would be more annoying to them if they could see it and could not change it. What avatar did you use, oh wait, what am I asking for :o
I haven't done it with avs yet, only sigs. I just thought of avs today since someone was trying to wind the staff up with avs, so... :D
Good to see you are still up to your dastardly ways Ant. Should be a fun little project. Let us know when you've finished the mod for the software that shall not be named. ;)
Actually I'm finding my motivation to actually code stuff is very patchy these days. If someone wants to nick this idea and write their own Elk mod for it, go ahead. I won't be offended. If nobody else does it, I'll probably get around to it (but you know what that can be like).