The giant smileys are a quirk of the forum software. They result when you type in a smiley emoticon; that is a : followed by a ).
You can obtain normal sized emoji by clicking on the “smileys” button on the bottom left when composing a post, and picking one’s emoji of choice.
Of course, if you like the giant emoji you are very welcome to use them. This is just to explain what is going on. I expect most are pretty surprised when the giant smiling face appears upon saving a new post.
It may also be helpful for people to know that any text-based smileys are problematic in general right now, so using the blue ‘smileys’ button below the typing space may be best.
Typing anything other than a colon+right parenthesis (smile) is really messed up. A left parenthesis for a ‘frown’ emoji may make the post vanish, rather than be posted. A semicolon for a ‘wink’ may wedge the software.
@adminpaul - It’s been a while, Paul. How’s that search going? We’re still hopeful that the various bugs that suddenly showed up last March will get fixed soon.
@adminpaul - Just in case a list helps… It appears that there may be some additional challenges that were posted in the ‘display-inconsistent-on-list-of-unread-posts’ thread, which was renamed to ‘Help Us Improve the Forum!’’
'Most recent topics with unread posts' button not functioning properly
Giant smileys
Wink-smileys making posts disappear
Post counts being stuck (no longer incrementing)
Forum members that have been around for a while have been muddling through, using various workarounds (which are still a pain in the neck), but this all must be pretty nuts for any newcomers.
Good luck with the search; hope you find someone that’s good (and can count on) soon.
