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[Som1Lse]

And more likely to have their first posts disposal'd. The younger newcomers also always seem to have their avatars on

Look at my post history. While my English may have been broken, I almost always contributed to the conversation in some way, despite very short posts.
It is perfectly possible for a newcomer to write reasonable posts.
Also when they select a custom avatar the avatar actually fulfils a purpose as you can actually recognize the person from it.

,but the older usually don't care. They just sign up after some lurking period ready to show off what they've been working on that has to do with LF2 (and usually, these are the posts you'd want to refill tea/coffee for).

Edit: Examples:
- @tyt2y3
- @Archer-Dante
- @BigThink
- @NightmareX1337
- @Redbeard (can't recall if that guy had his avatar or not when he joined, but point stands; it wasn't a short first-post).
- @Luigi600 (don't recall the full name, but it started with Luigi. he made a LF2 character installer kind of tool).

First of all 4/6 of these have an avatar which makes the statement "the older usually don't care" statistically false (at least for this sample).
Second they still have plenty of short posts just like any other user.

But yes, if you still want to be practical, then this:

having no avatar at all makes it seem that one can't use an avatar at all (probably because they need to reach a number of posts or something of that sort). I've been into this kind of forums before, where pretty much everything (including PM) is initially locked and is unlocked as you post more.

is a reason for why having default avatars may clear a misconception for some.

I do not see how this (outside of pure speculation (speaking of which)) would be more likely to inform newcomers that they can customize their avatar any more than a no avatar would.
If you look at user titles everybody has one, but you cannot change it yourself.

Eye candy. Looking at posts with only text is kinda dull for a fansite. This is a customized space (with good reason - LF fansite), and having a LF2 related default avatar customizes it even better, it gives a more LF2 feeling to it.

If I remember correctly the only thing on the entire forum that is customized to fit LF2 is the bandit sprites on the front page, and those only show up with the LFE v3 theme (though that is what most people will be using), but the bandits actually serve a purpose, and they almost do not affect the forum layout (they add 84 pixels vertically in total on a single page, and the horizontal difference is negligible. In fact if the first column had a padding of 3px instead of 5px they would make exactly no difference vertically). A default avatar has no such utility, and serves only to fit a theme.

It takes 120 pixels of vertical space for the reason I mentioned. If it is good reason or not, I'll leave that for you (and the others) to decide.

People with no avatar usually make few posts. If they are going to stay they usually end up adding one. So the gains in space are not that significant...

I admit this is largely a subjective discussion. Poll?
Also using the full 120 pixels is not required. The default avatar could just as well be a 80 pixels etc. avatar.

I can recognize the avatar frequenting members based on the color scheme, outlines etc. of it faster than I can read their name, but the same purpose does not exist with a default avatar since multiple users will share it.

How does having no avatar change this?

It takes up less space and is not in the way of the rest of the content.

I also realize now that with the power of userscripts I can simply hide all default avatars on a page, so I suppose I actually can change other peoples avatars (at least in my own browser).