What happened to our avatars? I can't even find them in profiles. Did something happen and we lost them?

I wondered the same thing... I can see my own, but everyone elses is gone.

See this page of this thread for details about the disappearance of avatars.

-- Leslie

The avatars were eating up a phenomenal amount of bandwidth, slowing down the servers. IMHO it was like a three ring circus at times on subjects that were sensitive in nature (particularly the animated ones), so I can't really say that I miss them. It was really just a failed experiment...

Gary IMHO they brought a little light relief to what is otherwise a very very serious forum.Is that such a bad thing? I understand the practicalities of the problems however but must say i will miss them a lot

IMHO that is so sad.. It said a lot about the person by their choice of avatar.
Sunshine.. love and hugs
Helen

I agree with Cookey and Helen. I really miss them and I think they provided an identity for an individual and a lot of comic relief. Admittedly there times on a particular serious thread that I would have like to been able to turn it off for a single post. I wondered at times about the amount of core these guys were using because my machine would lock up from time to time, didn't even think about band width. Too bad, I really miss them.

Take care,
Eileen

I never had any problems with my puter. Mayne it's beacuse it's fairly new and has a lot of power. If the avatars interfered with even one of us, it was worth getting rid od them. I miss my "Tiger " tho. LOL

It wasn't an issue of slowing down individual users computers. It was the servers that host the site that were getting slammed. People were triple posting because of non responsiveness of the forum. They were bottlenecking the flow of information. We have had as many as 5 million hits in a day here - imagine millions of animated avatars all going at the same time. We had to make a choice - free flow of information or comic relief?!?! Was it really a choice? If we get higher speed or dedicated servers Brian may switch the avatars back on. I am just the messenger by the way - not the webmaster.