Default avatar

[A-Man]

First of all, appeal to majority: Just because all other sites does it does not make it a good decision.

True; point made clear without the link to wikipedia. But sticking to such conventions, as much as I am hating comparing LFE to facebook or other counterproductive sites, does serve to make using this forum easier and let people feel more familiar with what this board has to offer. Take a look at Yahoo's terribly counter-intuitive 'different' forum boards. We make intuitive.

Second facebook in particular is heavily designed around having an avatar next to every single post you do. If you took it away the layout would break, even if it was replaced with blank space it would look weird. The avatars on facebook also do not take up any extra space, as there is always text next to it. Same thing as far as I am aware goes for youtube.

Right. Youtube is more geared toward its video content way more than the comments. Heck, they even allow their users to block comments in their videos because, let's be honest, how much do comments usually contribute compared to the content of the videos? There is no better way for someone to better represent themselves as fast online like with a video of yourself or you speaking to your audience directly.

Facebook is supposedly a "family and friends" network where people can make a secondary presence on a much more open world nowadays. People in real life are more concerned about impressions they make, and photos, pictures of self. So an avatar is surely something important to those people, regardless whether it takes some space or not.

As an example, the cplusplus forum, is another internet network on the other side of the scale which main purpose's to be productive and constructive. To ask questions or give answers. And all that is about a specific field, and that's the cplusplus language. That's a case where an avatar isn't really necessary because who you are doesn't really matter as much as how you're 'fluent' with the cplusplus language and the answers/questions you have to offer.

LFE, like MangaD mentioned previously, is a fan forum that is more than about LF2, and style matters. You said yourself that the only thing representing LF2 here is the bandit icon in the index, and a default LF2-ish avatar would further add to that feel.

If you really want to tell users that they can change their avatar make it a part of the registration phase, so they can optionally pick an avatar to use.

Optionally? If that is added to the registration form properly, then it should be a matter of a click on a combo box with avatar icons listed, which no one would likely be too stingy as to not click it. In which case it yields almost the same result. Why not go with a smaller placeholder avatar if space is that much of an issue?

Which modern websites space out things unnecessarily? Just about every website I use on a regular basis have a pretty reasonable design to them.

LFE signatures look like they're a part of the post if you're not familiar with the separator. They're more better at wasting space also with repetitive irrelevant content.