When I first joined, I tried to get an avatar, but the avatar function is disabled??
Can we enabled it?

No, other than admins/mods and a handful of special members, avatars are automatically set based on rank.

Is there a listing of what are the criteria for what rank?

Freshman Member 50 posts - 0 feathers
Sophomore Member 125 posts - 0 feathers
Junior Member 250 posts - 1 feather
Senior Member 500 posts - 2 feathers
ThinkPadder 1000 posts - 3 feathers
Senior ThinkPadder 2000 posts - 4 feathers

Then there are special ranks that are manually granted at the discretion of the Admin team - those also have 4 feathers except for the person who posted the 20,000th post who has the Peachy avatar.

Thanks Jane, you are seriously, the best.

Thanks! I was looking for this!

In lieu of the above list/explanation, and just out of pure curiosity, can anybody perhaps enlighten me: What's the definition of a "Contributing Member"

Johan