FYI, WordPress 2.9 has a minor debate going on over here: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10145

Basically, they replaced the old smilies with new ones from this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tango-smilies/

The change got pushed to wp.com early, with some annoyed people chiming in:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-smilies

I noticed it on my test blog when it got updated, and I've made a plugin for 2.9-rare users to undo the damage:
http://ottodestruct.com/blog/wordpre...assic-smilies/

At this point, I'm of two minds:

1. Put the smileys back and have some form of vote or something to determine this. Just replacing something that's been in there since almost the beginning (matt checked in the graphics himself 4 years ago) without any debate sucks rocks.

2. Smilies shouldn't be in the core anyway. If there can't be consensus on what set to use, remove them all. Let plugins do it. Package a default plugin if you like, but the normal case for customizations that are based on opinions is that WP leaves them to plugins.

Not sure which I like better. I do know that I think the new smilies are ugly as hell, and I'm using my own plugin to eliminate them on my sites currently. I was more than a little annoyed when I updated a site and found that it now had these hideous graphics on it. A WordPress upgrade modified my actual content. Not happy about that at all.