Speaking as a graphics-oriented person

I think avatars aren't that bad provided there are reasonable boundaries with regard to size and complexity. I'm not really nuts about animated ones though. I've seen forums where folks are using avatars that were just about the same size or larger than that nice looking lady that was walking away from us a few days ago! Way too big and complex... and in that case... distracting.
I think many forums on the net allow them because it gives users a chance to make a visual representative statement that might have some interesting underlying characteristics. They can be esoteric, cynical, whimsical, or whatever. What I never liked was when a forum gave you a choice of 40-50 stock avatars. With compression techniques and a strict size limit, the bandwidth required for a 1/2" X 1/2" or say a 64 pixel X 64 pixel 256-color avatar shouldn't be all that bad.
James... are you an IT guy? They tend to frown on frivolous use of bandwidth.
Mike
Former 760EL/A20/T21 Owner • Currently Reloading T30 2.4Ghz/1.5Gb Memory/60Gig HDD/SXGA+/XPP To Sell