The reason i asked this question is i saw a newbie member wearing avatar in his/her profile and other members noticed it too but can't locate the thread where i saw the post to share the link here.
Anyway, not a big deal though. Thanks for all the input!
-WK
A few years ago everyone could have avatars. Then there was some security bug found and some spamming happened so Theymos restricted avatars to Full Member and above. However any Newbie, Jr. Member, or Member who had an avatar at the time of that change could still have their avatar. They just couldn't change it otherwise they would also have to wait until they were Full Members.