I'm going to have to disagree but I can't say why without resorting to examples that may or may not make sense.
stealth edit: Overcomplicated ascii art that has a reasonable word equivalent are the only time I can think of that we've done this.
Posted under General
I prefer non-symbolic tags myself. It makes more sense to me to use words rather than unintuitive emoticons which end up obliterated by underscore to space changes and by being forced into lowercase.
If I'm in the minority though, it's not something I'd really care too much about if we keep it as is.