The ever arrogant <wink> smiley
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I think the wink smiley is very useful.
By writing short forum messages, it's not always clear if someone is being serious or joking around.
Making the wink, at least points to that .We don't always know the personalities of the people we are talking to and sometimes there is simply the language barrier.
With those little smiley icons, a lot of misunderstanding can be avoided.I never considered the wink smiley to be arrogant either.
At least a lot less arrogant than
or even 
and 
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Intersting. Those 3 I can pass off as joking, or purposely over the top. Its just the wink that bugs me. Here's a faked example, but not too far from reality:
@unknownuser said:
Hey, I just learned that if I do this and this and this, I can make some pretty awesome stuff!
Cool, Member A shared something.
@unknownuser said:
Yup, and if you skipped this and this, you could do it in half the time and it would be better
See, now in the voice reading that in my head, that little wink just pushes the response off into arrogant land. Memeber X is saying that he already knew all that, then improved on it, then winked to make sure you knew that he just showed you up.
Seriously its annoying (in my mind).
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I find your example to be a great example, where the wink-smilie is actually really good..!
I assume that if you want to interpret it as a negative and "I know better than you" arrogant kind of way, then I fully understand what you mean, but I believe you need to look at it a bit differently...I'm on the same side as Kwistenbiebel and like he wrote:
@kwistenbiebel said:
By writing short forum messages, it's not always clear if someone is being serious or joking around.
Making the wink, at least points to that.We don't always know the personalities of the people we are talking to and sometimes there is simply the language barrier.
With those little smiley icons, a lot of misunderstanding can be avoided.I could add... Since you can't see the body language, the twinkle in one's eye, the tone of the voice, the smile on the face etc., the smilies are there to help the user express things better and avoid these misunderstandings, which so easily can happen in the written format...
(Dang... I didn't even dare using a single smilie in the above... That's weird...)
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That example of yours seems a perfectly normal use of the wink, i've seen it use in the exact same way many times and never did I or any others felt that it was condescending or arrogant.
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But how is it not a little condescending to correct someone and then wink like you know something they dont? How about a smile? Who wants to be winked at after they are corrected? Play it through in your mind. Savor the unsavory-ness of the arrogant wink. I bet I could do it in real life and you'd get see how awful it looks in my mind
Oh, I laugh at how silly I am about some things.....this is one of them,
Chris
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maybe you should just ignore it
. I personally hate talking with people in writing especially girls 
, but it's preffered than not at all, there are obvious drawbacks, i can make a joke and sound like i am being rude or God knows how else.You must understand that the smileys are used diffrently than human gestures and faces in real life, how many times do you roll your eyes or laugh similarly to a smiley? Some times people son't laugh when they hear something funny they just say or give a small smile instead of laughing. I frequently smile at certain funny things i read but put the laughing smiley on the response. It's a different form of expressing your self and different rules apply than when talking face to face. So that little wink guy is many times used as showing that you liked helping or giving advice to somebody else not arrogance.I think it would be easier to show arrongace by saying something like: " You don't know this!? I thought everybody knew it." than giving advice and put
Any way this was my rather large 2 cents...more like 4 cent:P
Hope you pass over your anti-winky stage.Cheery-O
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AAAARRRRH!!! Who ye be callin' arrogant, ye scurvy dog?
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haha, great topic Chris- never thought about the
so much, although I have wondered sometimes if I've used it appropriately. I am a culprit; I guess my interpretation of it is that it is a smiling wink, such as one would use between very good friends in real life. To use your own example:"Yup, and if you skipped this and this, you could do it in half the time and it would be better"
Without the
it feels abrupt, cold.... you might even imagine the author smirking 
while hitting "post"! (now there's a smiley we don't need) However, to me it implies it was meant in a friendly buddy buddy way. Often I think the 
can be used instead in the sense of "I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that, etc, etc"The trouble with smileys is that it's never very clear whether the smiley represents the author or recipient or if they're being used sincerely or sarcastically. Otherwise a smiley based on this pic would be perfect for concluding corrections, but then that would really come over as condescending!
I completely take your point though that
can be seen as condescending, even sarcastic- in that sense perhaps we should just take the comical approach and complete corrections with 
. LOL -
Wow, who knew there were so many winking animals out there? Maybe I just need to picture that pirate cat or the poor dog whose left ear always goes up when he winks instead of the conescending smile I currently envision.
::I'm thinking my head must be slightly mis-wired::
Chris
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that is for sure a good tricky one, Alan
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Here's an arrogant one...
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and much more beauty than Fredericks
)though Fredericks logo is unbeatable
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