You have to rank up. Only Full members and older can have avatar.
Why??
I thought that avatars are just fun and pretty. Why restrict it from new members?
Quite a strange policy in my opinion.
Everybody used to be able to have one but Avatars were disabled for quite some time due to a security exploit, but now they're just a perk of achieving that rank like bigger signature sizes etc. People can use avatars to help impersonate someone so I think it's a good idea limiting them to a certain rank.
Not to mention the fact that you can/used to be able to use sequencial gifs as far as I understand it which would be greatly annoying if all newbies were able to do this. (Imagine 1 user creating 1000 accounts and postingone post on each in random places with a flashing/annoying avatar, it'd get a bit annoying).
EDIT: gifs are supported still.
Thanks for the info.
Googled a bit, and found out how to become VIP or Donator
Donator: Manually applied by administration after 10 BTC donation, and gets 5 gold coins under his name
of which the last is half green. 5 coins are shown regardless of post count when user is a Donator.
VIP: Manually applied by administration after 50 BTC donation, and gets 5 gold coins under his name
of which the last is half purple. 5 coins are shown regardless of post count when user is a VIP.
40000$ to become a Donator
and
200000$ for a VIP status.
Quite expensive indeed.
I was thinking, that I could maybe Donate 0,5 BTC, if I would ever gain access to my lost address (unlikely)
I would expect at least a " Super duper extra generous Donator, everyone bow to him" status in return
But it seems the minimum amount to donate is 10 BTC. I wonder if there are many members, who are that rich.
The forum currently manages to sell advertising space here on a weekly basis with more than 1000000 views to each advert (according to Theymos' info).
This sells for about 2+
BTC per slot so it's quite well maintained in the amount it brings in.