The Strict Guidelines, as far as I know, pretty much follow common sense and civil behaviour: ask first, and respect the answer. A lot of people who make oodles of icons and post them in collections will say, in the post, "feel free to snurch" or something along those lines, which means you don't even have to ask. It's considered good manners in that kind of situation to thank the artist/creator in the comments, and tell her/him that you've helped yourself.
Of course, if the answer is "no, I want to keep that one for private use", this needs to be followed. I've occasionally seen people post along the lines of "help yourself to any icon except my default one, 'cause that's very important to me".
There's one absolute beyond the Ask First, which is Retain the Credit. When you upload an icon as a userpic, there's a line where you can include notes: this is often used for crediting the source for an icon. Take a look at Lothi's userpics collection for some good examples. In forums, you can put the icon credit in a signature line.
As for me, I personally love it when people like the LOLMacs enough to want to use them. It makes me feel all warm and squeeful inside. I have most of the icons in a publicly-accessible gallery here:
. . . and come to think of it, I have some new ones I need to upload to the galleries.
I do have one request in addition to the typical one about being credited. You can take any icon you see without asking, but if you want an icon made from a full-sized LOL, and the icon doesn’t exist yet, please ask me to size it down rather than taking the original and resizing it. I like to know what icons are out there, and since I can go back to the original files to do the resizing, the quality is a lot better, and I like that too.
Hope the absurdly long answer hasn’t put you to sleep . . . !
I went and snagged a few... now I'll have to go through all 600-odd back LOLs (what a hardship, right?) because I know there were some I wanted as icons that aren't there. I'll try not to make the list too long, but thanks so much!
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Of course, if the answer is "no, I want to keep that one for private use", this needs to be followed. I've occasionally seen people post along the lines of "help yourself to any icon except my default one, 'cause that's very important to me".
There's one absolute beyond the Ask First, which is Retain the Credit. When you upload an icon as a userpic, there's a line where you can include notes: this is often used for crediting the source for an icon. Take a look at Lothi's userpics collection for some good examples. In forums, you can put the icon credit in a signature line.
As for me, I personally love it when people like the LOLMacs enough to want to use them. It makes me feel all warm and squeeful inside. I have most of the icons in a publicly-accessible gallery here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/lolmac/gallery/0000za09
. . . and come to think of it, I have some new ones I need to upload to the galleries.
I do have one request in addition to the typical one about being credited. You can take any icon you see without asking, but if you want an icon made from a full-sized LOL, and the icon doesn’t exist yet, please ask me to size it down rather than taking the original and resizing it. I like to know what icons are out there, and since I can go back to the original files to do the resizing, the quality is a lot better, and I like that too.
Hope the absurdly long answer hasn’t put you to sleep . . . !
no subject
I went and snagged a few... now I'll have to go through all 600-odd back LOLs (what a hardship, right?) because I know there were some I wanted as icons that aren't there. I'll try not to make the list too long, but thanks so much!
no subject
And you probably already know this, but there's a link right at the top of the page, above the Invizible Bomb LOL, that jumps you back to LOLMac #1.
It's been way too long since I did much iconification, so I'll probably enjoy making them at least as much as I hope you enjoy picking them out!