Anyway to upload our own avatars?

[R-type]

I would like to have a nice picture I've taken of the tree in my garden as my avatar or perhaps use the 'self portrait' miniature I've made/painted. Will this happen at some point? :) Not important of course, everything is quite fine as it is -just wondering.

[Gary Teter]

It's on "The List". No idea when it would be implemented, though. Our internal image-handling process is a bit of a nightmare. (A nightmare which could be solved by throwing $15,000-$20,000 at the problem, but for some reason Vic keeps saying "no". :-)

[Heathansson]

Dibs on Mason Reese.

[Vic Wertz]

R-type wrote:

I would like to have a nice picture I've taken of the tree in my garden as my avatar or perhaps use the 'self portrait' miniature I've made/painted. Will this happen at some point? :) Not important of course, everything is quite fine as it is -just wondering.

Well, we've discussed it a few times. One of the things we like about the limited number of avatars is that there's a consistency in style, to some extent, that helps give a nice clean look to our boards. It kind of bugs some of us when we go to other sites and have to look at boards where avatars can be giant boxes with flashing green words on hot pink backgrounds.

We also might not have all of the resources to police all of the images that users might upload, and we certainly don't want people uploading offensive images. However, our to-do list includes a system where users can report offensive content, so once that system is in place, custom avatars become more feasable, and we'll have a more in-depth discussion about it at that time.

At the very least, we'll enforce the image size, and disallow animation.

-Vic.
.