Gravatars should have more options

[TSP]

Hello,

In IPB 3.3 you decided to change how gravatars works.

In 3.2 users could explicitly choose to show their gravatar. When upgrading to 3.3 the gravatar is forced upon all members that have not uploaded one.

This caused almost immediate complaints from some of our members, which lead to a support ticket. But it was obviously how it was intended to work according to Invision Power Systems in 3.3. This lead me to have to turn off gravatars, because I and some members viewed it as a privacy concern.

[TSP]

Wow, brilliant. The editor cut my post in half. Completely brilliant.

Note to self: remember to always ctrl+a and ctrl+c before submitting posts...

[Rimi]

Wow, brilliant. The editor cut my post in half. Completely brilliant.

Note to self: remember to always ctrl+a and ctrl+c before submitting posts...

Well there's a bug report on it so at least you can find satisfaction in the fact that you're not alone.

[TSP]

Just to continue on my post, since it got cut off. I'm not gonna write it all again.

But I also argued that it sends a lot of extra, unecessary http requests.

Because even though the same avatar is returned, the default one, IPB has to a send a different image request for each user...

My post ended with the suggestion of adding an option to control whether gravatars should automatically be applied to users or not. I also suggested that they should provide an optional form item during registration that admins could choose to have if they wanted.

I also mentioned that we should not have to turn of features that've previously been enabled..