I will post a reply of my own personal opinion to get things rolling...

Any avatars?
Do

If yes, small or large avatars?
Probably a medium sized image around 200x200

Signatures
Don't. I can't stand signatures.

Smilies
Do

Animated Smilies
Do. As long as they look very good and match the environment and design. I'm tired of the yellow smiles.

Post Icons
I never use this feature. Although I may use it if the post icons were designed well and expressed a specific interest.

Animated Post Icons?
No thank you. It looks ridiculous on the threadlist.

Stickied Theads
I'm ok with these as long as they don't stay up more than 2 weeks and there aren't more than 3 sticked threads.

There's no right answer, because what you choose determines the tone of your forum. What's right for a young demographic is wrong for an older one, and so on. So I'm going to weigh in on how I think each of these features alters the tone of a forum.

Any avatars?
Small is more businesslike, none is a little stark.

Signatures
The more signature links, the more you will tend to attract spammers and aggressive marketers.

Image Signatures
These make your forum sillier, more fun, more youth-oriented.

Smilies
Same as image signatures, only tackier.

Animated Smilies
Cheesy and distracting.

Post Icons
Depends on the icons.

Animated Post Icons?
Same as animated smilies.

Stickied Theads
These are essential for introducing newbies to how things work and making things easy to understand. A couple of stickies indicates a clear, organised forum.

Well, it's a forum. Anyone may end up viewing it. I'm not seeking this information from a users point of view rather a point of view of any ole' random person who may stop by. If the site isn't attractive to a random person there is a low chance of them becoming interested in becoming a member. I can deal with the member requests later down the road.

I have no set demographic or target audience so anyone's opinion will be useful.

There is no such thing as "no demographic" and you can't appeal to every one. Your forum must have a subject matter, what is the main demographic interested in that subject matter? Those are the people that you need to aim the forum at if you want to build a community, and the people who stop by to look at that community are more likely to belong to that demographic.

I have friends who frequent very different forums to me, they would think this forum was hell because there isn't a pinging sparkly shiny flashy avatar peeping out at you round every corner, they would come here and leave before they had read anything, I would visit their forums and leave with a migraine...there is no one size fits all.

[edited by: Yoshimi at 3:50 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2009]

In short, it's a general forum, so it'd be impossible to guess what type of user may stop by since it'd be impossible to guess what type of information may be submitted.

Should I have a specific subject matter it'd be simple, though I do not, which is why I'm here asking..

so you are creating a forum with no subject matter? what is the be benefit for someone using your forum? Is it attached to a site? if it has no subject matter how would someone find it? you need to answer these questions first otherwise how your forum looks won't matter because you will struggle to get anyone to find it.

I got it covered Yoshimi. I respect your concerns, though, I came here for opinions, not advice.

So please, can the polling continue...

Any avatars?
If yes, small or large avatars?
Signatures
Image Signatures

Yes to all but with limits. No animations is the first rule. I personally really like avatars because it's very easy to spot who it is posting if you frequent the forum, the size limit should be medium like around 120X120 max. Signature images should be kept to reasonable height and width like 100X250. Both the avatar and signature image should have low file size too around 5kb to 10kb.

Smilies

Sure why not? All the major forum software I know allows you to customize whether they are parsed or not, same thing with a lot of other features you have mentioned. That's really the great thing about any forum software is the user can customize their own experience. I really don't see the reason to turn any of these features off, set the defaults you want the world to see and let the user decide what they see.

As far as animated smilies, sure but I keep them in the "More icons" selection.

Post Icons

I'm assuming you mean the extra icons such as "!" or a "?" that can be placed next to the "read" and Unread" icons? This is where I draw the line because that is just clutter IMO.

Animated Post Icons?

Too busy and makes things look cheesy.

Stickied Theads

There four max, once it gets past that point start a single sticky with links to the others.

As far as animated smilies, sure but I keep them in the "More icons" selection.

Good point, to prevent the over-usage of animated smilies.

There four max, once it gets past that point start a single sticky with links to the others.

Also a good point. It's hard to expect how many stickies there may be and this would be a good solution.

Thanks coalman

[edited by: Atomic_Justice at 3:07 am (utc) on Jan. 27, 2009]