Yeah, I know this thread is old, but I saw the discussion pop up somewhere else, so I'll just add this: The fun thing at the time most of these were added is that we had a pretty big, longstanding user base AND we had a longstanding set of Internet-based "inside jokes" that most of the regulars knew. When I started the forum emoticon collection, I think it was fun and funny for everyone seeing the coupling of emoticons with usage codes that were based on users and/or said inside jokes. Unfortunately, that same set of factors really makes it a pain many years after the fact now that many of those users and jokes are long forgotten, which makes the codes for many of them really counterintuitive. Sorry about that. There are tons that even I have either forgotten about altogether or at least forgotten the codes, so I have to go into the admin panel every now and then to take a look.
If there are particular ones people like to use a lot and feel like there should be a more intuitive code, post and let me know. It would take WAY more time and effort than it would be worth to redo them all from scratch, so I'm not doing that. But I don't mind doing some if people want.