I've heard that it's Frances answer to Saw and Hostel. Is this true?

Avatars are going to stay the way they are for now. Only available for reviewers, moderators and administrators.

That's fine, but out of curiosity, why?

...

I hate avatars.

This is kind of like when Congress votes to give themselves a pay raise.

.... if Congressmen received zero remuneration but were instead allowed to choose a distinctive hat to wear.

Yes, like that.

Why?

Same answer as before. Server load

1) I thought we had new, spiffy servers?
2) How does every other forum on the planet seem to be able to swing this feature that's built into the software except ours?

What if avatars had to be saved off-site? What if we had to be able to host our own image in order to have one?

If avatars were saved off site I think that would cause more problems in the sense you are dependent upon each of those machines to be up/running/responsive when you open a thread.

Image hosting sites usually aren't up 24/7?

You can reach everything on the I'net anytime/first time w/o any outages? You must have a much better ISP than I do Just look at a.tribalfusion.com and the ad server here that hangs up occasionally, slowing everything down. Now imagine opening a thread that sends out requests to 20-40 different servers (depending upon the number of unique posts, people who have avatars, your post count setting) looking for everyone's avatar. Sounds like it's going to cause a lot more problems for little gain.

I guess I don't understand how the majority of forums on the internet can have avatars but it's technically impossible for DVDTALK. Many other IB owned forums offer them.

Tell IB to put us on the same kind of server that, say, Highdefdigest.com is on. Problem solved.

I see a forum with avatars and say to myself, "On second thought, let's not go there. It's a silly place."

Repeating your previous opinion isn't really germane to the discussion at this point.

Don't visit many forums do you? Why are they silly? Are they any more silly than all the crap people have in their signatures that no one else cares about?

You're right. I just couldn't resist a Holy Grail reference, which a recent post brought to mind.

I don't begrudge you wanting them. As long as we can turn them off, AND they don't slow down the forum I'm cool with them. Not that my opinion means anything.

Touche'. In my defense, some of the links in my sig are for other's convenience. Example, many here collect exclusives and the links to the threads are helpful I've been told. But some of the links in my sig and just for my convenience, posts that I update weekly or so and this is my way to access them quickly. I try to make it as small and unobtrusive as possible. Like avatars, if people are bothered by them I imagine they are turned off.

Why are they silly? If the reasons aren't obvious to you (they've been stated by others in the thread) then there is no sense in "arguing". But as I said above, I apologize for stating my opinion twice and don't begrudge your wanting them. Just not my thing maybe.

Thank you!

We would probably have avatars, but that might take a tiny little bit of caring/effort on the part of the shitty ass company who bought this site, and of course that's not going to happen.

I'm not really trying to argue. But what is silly is saying that avatars clutter up a site but having a encyclopedia like amount of rainbow colored links and small print under your (and others) names doesn't.

Avatars let users express themselves to others just like your links do. No difference.