In this thread, and the other one that lackblogger started, people have expressed that emoticons are an easy way to show one agrees/disagrees or likes/dislikes a post without having several posts just saying it.I read the entire thread. Most of it is debate on the best solution to the "problem". But it didn't seem to me anyone cared much if they were kept, at least I don't recall any compelling arguments to that effect. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not going back and re-reading four pages just to find the one or two people who think emojis are the bee's knees and a "must have" forum feature.
Regardless, IMHO, if the emojis are causing a problem big enough to cause concern among the mods, they should just be turned off. They don't add a whole lot to the quality of dialogue on this forum. I've never even noticed them, to be honest. If they are easily abused, hurt people's feelings, and make the moderators' lives more difficult, just shut them off.
The whole topic is kind of hilarious to me. A lot of angst over nothing. Facebook emojis would probably drive some of these guys insane.
If you go with #2, be prepared to have the same minority of users who already don't get along and/or who can't get along with others and/or are just here to troll other users (and probably already cause headaches for the moderators) constantly crying to the mods about how User X keeps posting a "rolling eyes" emoji on all their posts. (God, even just saying that sounds so immature and childish, but here we are). This is what assholes will do to piss other people off because posting something like a personal attack will probably get them banned. It's not a "forum feature" problem, it's a USER problem, and likely it's a very SMALL number of users who abuse the feature. Personally, I think it's a huge waste of time trying to moderate something like emojis, but if the consensus is that this a good use of the volunteer moderators' limited time, go for it. I don't really care about the emojis either way.
Some have also said it is a good way to interact if one is reluctant to post for some reason, for example being shy.
Personally I think emoticons as well as emojis are good ways to try to color one's responses with emotions and facial expressions.