I actually like this idea. But please offer the ability to turn them off to nonsubscribed members. 
I think the “attracts the wrong type of people” argument can easily be made moot.
Make NoAvatars the default. Nobody wondering in will ever see them. Nobody who doesn’t explicitly enable them will be able to see them. It’s only a feature for those people who NEED it in order to recognize other people.
(Yes, that includes me. I know the names of like 5 people here.)
Another idea I can get behind.
Damn, I did a piss poor job of defending the No Avatars Argument, didn’t I? I called for back up but never got any. 
It’s a stupid argument. It’s not the lack of avatars that keeps the “undesirables” away. Really.
There are many teenage users here, and most of them you wouldn’t know because they act same as anyone else. And most of the trolls are adults.
Why is it always that ageism is the sort of discrimination that’s ok? Why not just say avatars keep out black people? It’s like, by not giving them an avenue of expression, they won’t come on these boards.
Who said anything about teenagers? I certainly didn’t. I simply said it would attract people who like such things, and that’s not what we want (or so goes the argument).
Straw man, Alex.
Well, on reflection, not so much a straw man (you didn’t raise it) as allowing yourself to be distracted by a red herring. 
And why won’t someone comment on these auto-genned monsters. They’re fn awesome! (Scroll down a while)
Nifty idea, but too cutesy for my taste–which is why I support allowing users to choose their own avatars or using something random but abstract.
Yeah, maybe, although the only anti-avatar arguments in this thread prior to my post were not that argument.
I can’t say I’m really convinced it would cause an influx of the wrong sort of people here, or even that I think an influx of the wrong sort of people would be an entirely bad thing.
They could, because of Hash Collision, but that could happen regardless of the variable chosen for hashing.
I did not click the link. I don’t want to see what happens when two frypans have managed to run into each other in a greasy spoon at 7 am. :eek:
Cutesy, yes. But extremely distinct, and memorable? Absolutely.
Scroll down and look closely. After skimming like that, I actually stopped a number of times and said “I saw that before” and sure enough it was someone commenting twice. Something about faces, and cartoon characters, and the permutations possible in this implementation, is extremely memorable. Well, hell, they’re faces! Now, they could be less cute (I haven’t got a problem with them, but alright), but the whole thing just works very, very well.