This seems to have turned into a pretty heated thread. I agree with you Steve. I've only been hanging around these forums for a little bit but the vibe I am getting is that there are all these "rules" on what "pixel art" is exactly.
You're right. You've only been here for a little while.
We do have
"rules" here. Here's a summary:
Don't be an ass!Do not rip artwork. Ever!Stay on topic.Things NOT to post! (talks about porn and warez, says nothing of what constitutes pixel art)
Content tags/warnings. (talks violence and nudity, says nothing of what constitutes pixel art)
No Rants. 
Signature and Avatar.And then some pointers on good critique etiquette and not overusing smileys.
And that's it as far a hard fast rules go. There is a supplemental entry in the FAQ on what pixel art is or isn't in the context of this board:
What exactly is Pixel Art?
Pixel Art is a discipline by which images are created with pixel-level intent or precision. It is more than an end product - It is a methodology focusing on techniques such as hand drawn dithering, anti-aliasing, shading, animation, geometry, and some color theory. Here on this forum, people develop these skills and in turn teach them to others.
When you post work that focuses on these methods, you will receive useful feedback that will help you to improve. While there's no static law that says something IS or IS NOT Pixel Art, some works can certainly be more in line with what is discussed here. For example, Oekaki, a web based drawing phenomenon, does not consistently represent the methods. Also, just because a game uses a sprite, that does not immediately qualify it as pixel art since some games have been known to convert 3D rendered models into sprite stills. Posting works like this is not encouraged.
Members at this forum are interested in many subjects and artistic mediums, and we do offer places on the forum more appropriate for the posting of non-pixel work. If you're posting reference images for pixel work, this is an exceptional case. Blatant disregard for the purposes of the forum will not be tolerated.
The last paragraph is a bit out of date now with the lowspec board, and in practice spammers/griefers seem to inhabit other boards so the big scary threat is mostly superfluous.
For example, I don't really use dithering much. Dithering is a techique used when there was an strict limitations to the colors you can used and that limitation doesn't really exist anymore on most modern platforms, so why would I use dithering?
A couple of points. First, you don't have to use dithering, but it doesn't hurt to know how. You have to know the rules before you can break them. Otherwise you're kinda make sweeping conclusions about something you don't really understand, yeah?
On that note, dithering isn't just the poor man's gradient. Many novices try to use it as such and the results are genuinely hideous. When you say "dithering" that's probably what you mean, but that's a naive definition. Why would anyone use dithering?... because it is useful for other things, like creating texture and giving a sense of style. It's a handy tool in your bag of tricks.
Using the actual shade is makes for sharper looking images in my opinion.
Yeah, but not all pixel art is or should be made of sharp looking images. Seems like it might be useful if someone explained what dithering is and gave some guidelines on how to use it effectively. Is that devil? (The answer is no).
I do see that things like dithering can have a certain appeal to them. Like the banner of this page, but that really characturizes the effect more than anything.
Hmm, yeah, texture and style maybe? It seems like your definition of dithering was based on your previous sentence, and in the process of writing it down you internalized that there's something more to it. Look there, we've learned something! And I think you where trying to use the word "characterize" in a derogatory sense, but characterize by definition means to describe the distinctive nature or features of something. In which case I'd say yeah, you're spot on. Maybe you meant it's a caricature of the effect?
So, I'll guess I'll put myself in the uncool category on this forum as a non "pixel purist".
That's fine, although I doubt most of the artists here even bother categorizing themselves and others. Maybe because they've moved beyond high school.
To be honest, I don't like many of the popular "pixel art" tools like Grafx2 or Pro Motion. I find their interfaces particular unintuitive. I don't use photoshop/gimp though. And while I'm not a pixel purist, using a lot of the tools will pretty much butcher your art.
What is this need of yours to categorize and typecast everything? I'd bet you'd be surprised at the variety of favorite tools and tastes among the people here. Granted, you probably won't see a lot of people using Painter or Zbrush as their primary weapon, but it's a pixelart board for christ's sake. And you're right, there are plenty of ways to butcher your art, whether it be in Photoshop or Mspaint.
