Avatars: all important or just a nice extra for the profile?

Certainly not all important. What each person says means a lot more to me than the avatar they chose to represent them when saying it. But they can have meaning. Mine does.

I think the great value they add is that they make it easier for use to get to know each other as we post and read. There are certain people here who write some phenomenally deep and well thought out replies to questions. Whenever I see their avatar in a thread, I immediately zoom in.to see what they had to say. .

I use it to help identify people at a glance, but it isn’t a real necessity, just a nice little feature.

Mine is my favorite picture! It’s mostly for faster identification, but it’s not quite necessary.

For me there’s no such thing as a bad avatar even if I do think some are nicer-looking than others. :)

And although it doesn’t come up in the search; there actually was a thread a week or two ago about the meaning avatars and usernames here held for people.

I mostly look at names since avatars are changed a lot.

But I would like to see some more emphasis on usernames. Maybe make them a slightly darker shade of whatever color they are now. It all kinda blurs together for me. It is a lot easier on the quips with the white background.

Mostly I use them to quickly identify who’s who. Of course, some people change theirs often, so it’s certainly not foolproof. I don’t think they’re necessary, but I do think they foster a better sense of community.

http://www.djangoproject.com/

Tell them to make their own site.

For me it ended up as sentimental. I had a generic brown dog painting. But then our own flutherite cak fell ill with cancer. When she went in for surgery in August many of us changed our profile images ORANGE to support her.

At this time I was on holiday in cocoa beach and had only my cell phone and no way to remove the brown doggie and make it orange. I turned to @jonsblond and @Blondsjon who found me the avatar I now proudly have- still orange for cak.

The avatar became even more special when @whatthefluther carved it into stone and sent it to me as a gift. One might say that the community of Fluther chose my avatar. It fits, it is happy and I love it. :)

@Dog Very deep – heart deep. Thanks for sharing, Dog. :)

@johnpowell Are you sure you posted that last answer on the right question?

I do look for avatars before names possibly because as an artist I have a better memory for images than I do words. Avatars are also an expression of mood and personality, so to me they add a personalization that wouldn’t be present without them.

If I don’t recognize the avatar I look at the name.

@Dog I lurve you!