Edit: I don’t retract this comment but I should have rephrased it and posted it as a reply to this comment
I also note that avatars could use tricks to solve various constraints I’m imagining the LessWrong team might want to impose.
For example, if you think avatars might make the comments section too visually interesting you could render them in greyscale, or with muted colors. And if you think they might lead to people playing weird games with their avatars (I don’t think this is likely, but I can imagine someone worrying about it), you could let users choose from a small collection of acceptable-to-you, auto-generated images based on a hash of their username.
Edit: I don’t retract this comment but I should have rephrased it and posted it as a reply to this comment
I also note that avatars could use tricks to solve various constraints I’m imagining the LessWrong team might want to impose.
For example, if you think avatars might make the comments section too visually interesting you could render them in greyscale, or with muted colors. And if you think they might lead to people playing weird games with their avatars (I don’t think this is likely, but I can imagine someone worrying about it), you could let users choose from a small collection of acceptable-to-you, auto-generated images based on a hash of their username.