Forum:Animated gif's in the infobox

Good day everyone!
Straight to the point: I think we should not use animated pictures for infoboxes (and set a limit to the size of them in general).

Our current Image Guidelines are pretty clear that we should use gif's sparingly and only under certain circumstances:


 * "Firstly, animations are much larger files then images and larger files take time to load on a page. If there are several animations or a particularly large animation, then lag may occur on the page in some form (be it page loading time or just image loading time)."

Personally, my computer has no problems loading them. But the point is: this does not apply to everyone. We have to consider that unregistered visitors get the full load of ads on top. I know that some don't care (as long as it doesn't affect them), but try to put yourself in their place for a second. After all this is a wiki from One Piece fans for One Piece fans, and not only for those who can handle the traffic.


 * "Having a animation simply of two people talking is an example of animations which don't belong on a page, as a single frame and text can describe this action without any problems."

This rule is probably violated the most when I browse through our gif section. Here are some examples:

Gif's that don't add anything, despite being animated:,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,

And then we have gif's that actually show something, but are completely unnecessary to support the text. Keep in mind that gif's are meant to show things a normal image can't:,  ,  ,  ,. Don't let yourself be fooled, while they are indeed "nice to look at", they are not necessary (but still come at a cost).

In addition we have gif's that are (no offense) of extremely low quality and sometimes even contain subs: (this one even has credits of the creator on it), ,  ,  ,  ,  (probably the worst of all).

And finally we have gifs that are really helpful to display something, but in turn are monstrous in size: (3,195,430 bytes !),  (4,718,758 bytes!!!!),  (5,390,192 bytes....).

What I'm trying to say is:

Infobox pictures are big by nature (240px to fill the box nicely), however gif's work best when they are smaller in size:,  ,.

My suggestion:

We avoid using gif's for infoboxes, but place smaller versions where it fits on the article (if it is necessary). That way we have the best of both worlds. Deciding on a general rule would be helpful to keep the quality consistent, like a set size restriction (other wiki's already enforce such a rule, at least for gifs)