Going avatarless where avatars are required will usually be easy, for those who know what needs to be done. If you can manage, say, ten consecutive substantive comments in no need of moderation, then I will show you how. Alternatively, you may learn to love your Magritte apple, or you may decide that not commenting is preferable until such time as I get around to writing another boring instructional web design post that happens to cover this topic.

http://gravatar.com/

Follow the simple instructions. Use an acceptable image.

This is a part of your problem, McKenzie: You acknowledge that you are doing wrong, intentionally, and promise to do better, and then immediately turn around to denying that you've been doing wrong.

I specifically instructed you not to use a foul or declared-unacceptable word knowingly except to discuss its usage. Proper orthography is to place such a term, when being discussed as a term, in quotation marks. Doing so would also happen to be a good discipline for someone like you to adopt. Saying things just to "get my goat" is puerile behavior - or trolling: Also unacceptable.

The following comment - which you left a little while ago, and forced me to "moderate" - is an improper comment:

As you know, I don't often use "foul" language--I don't particularly like it myself. I have on occasion used it--as "f**k-all" above (a comment I assumed wouldn't see the light of day)--specifically to get your goat.

However, I'm afraid I don't consider nigger to be an instance of profanity--as I said, it *just is* the standard English word for a black African. You and your (admittedly, presently influential) political faction don't get to superintend the historic English language as if it were merely an instrument for the advancement of your political project. (For more, see Heidegger's Unterwegs zur Sprache.)

The following comment would be a proper comment, which is not to say I consider it a well-considered comment, or a comment of a type I would encourage now, since I do not have time to get into the subject matter you're intent on raising with anything like the care I believe required:

As you know, I don't often use "foul" language--I don't particularly like it myself. I have on occasion used it--as "f**k-all" above (a comment I assumed wouldn't see the light of day)--specifically to get your goat.

However, I'm afraid I don't consider "nigger" to be an instance of profanity--as I said, it *just is* the standard English word for a black African. You and your (admittedly, presently influential) political faction don't get to superintend the historic English language as if it were merely an instrument for the advancement of your political project. (For more, see Heidegger's Unterwegs zur Sprache.)

Enough on this today. Any further violations of the rules for commenting that I have made clear - prohibiting use of foul and unacceptable language as I have defined it for you, repeatedly - will be answered by suspension of your commenting privileges.

The only excuse for you or anyone else to use the word "nigger" at this blog will be specifically to discuss use of the word "nigger." Place it in quotation marks when you do so. Any other use of that word - as of other vulgar language - will be subject to editing. I don't like foul language of any kind, and I may or may not choose to explain myself. Just don't use it. Don't use profanity. Don't seek to offend. Don't use my blog for your personal campaigns against the evil speech-controlling SJWs unless you can do so in a way that doesn't tend to justify their existence.

I'll do with your comments as I see fit, and if you don't like how I treat them, don't make them - or sue me. When you use terms widely understood, even by small children, to be unacceptable, they will be edited away. I don't like having to do it. It wastes my time. I don't like having to discuss the matter every time you leave a comment either. Stop it.

As for why the apple, the allusion is to one of the better-known images in the history of art. Its recognizability is not on the level of la Gioconda or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but for the same reason it may for some divide the world a bit more effectively into the "two kinds of people" of legend.

I'm not so sure either about the general notion or about that particular dividing line, but your ignorance on that score - maintained stubbornly even in the presence of helpful hints - specifically in combination with your reflexively crude and foul, unacceptable etc. response - does strengthen the case in favor.

As for the rest, it is not clear to me at all that you are in fact capable of "remedy[-ing] that defect." You seem instead to be capable only of promising to do so, as you have demonstrated repeatedly, so no longer with any believability. So, go ahead and weep: Regardless of your preferences, which your conduct gives me good reason to reject, I think my next post may have more on this other feature I am working on, already in use in rough form: "comment-featuring" under the title "Extraordinary Comments."

As it happens, the EC displays in the sidebar and on its own archive page happen to include, for now, a recent comment of yours, along with your apple, which latter I think you should not disparage, as it may be your best feature, or your most extraordinary one. Perhaps you can use the prospects offered by the new featuring features, and by other new commenting enhancements, both already produced and still to come, as incentives to keep your promises and to produce comments worth highlighting. The ones disfigured by racist epithets, foul language, and special pleading will not make the cut.

When I've gotten far enough along on the featuring feature, I do expect next to turn to the docket, as already mentioned at the end of the post, though first from the point of view of new functionality. I may post one or two or more in the process of testing it, and you're welcome to participate: Among the key new features I am planning will, if all goes well enough, be one allowing you to subscribe to be notified when a particular post of interest to you is published, freeing you to spend more time at sites like VDARE or Taki's Magazine or Stormfront or wherever.

I agree, but it's a problem or points to one - or to the same old problem, latest chapter in continuing series.

CoM is funny, aesthetically somewhat pleasing as these things go, is only slightly esoteric and in a way that makes a point about the nature of internet-anonymous discourse, is respectful of site and internet/blogging history, and is also the product of a collective creative process. Yet for all of those reasons, it stands out. It stands out so much that it really would make more sense as a new site branding image, or basis for one, than as simply a default avatar. It seems too good for the site as is, and I'm not feeling any confidence in the development process at the moment.

The "default avatar" either is or overlaps with "the site's own avatar." So, precisely what makes CoM right is what makes it wrong, or to the extent it's right it's wrong.

In other words, I strongly doubt that we'd be able to reach a consensus on re-branding, either in the community or from the OT editors. Typical would be a long hard struggle to produce a consensus that does not produce the agreed-upon cooperative action. As for site content in general, of late - posts, conversation, editorial decisions - I'm more and more finding myself in "less said, the better" situations.

BTW, since I take it you are or were something of a Magritte fan: The Magritte print I had up on my wall when I was a teenager was of one of his Empire of Lights paintings: