Then why have usernames (displayed) at all? Why is a picture so different than a username in terms of degrading the painting of a "portrait" of ideas? You could drop them altogether or replace them with a random string (generated each page view).
The way the user names are colored, it looks like we barely have them at all: The post text is in black, and the other information is in gray. I frequently find myself reading the text before I read who wrote it... which I think is just fine. It sends the message that the content is more important than the poster.
Leaving usernames out entirely would make it harder to gain reputation which would probably reduce the amount of incoming content. The reputation aspect tied to a name, the cult of personality, is part of what keeps this thing churning.
Imagine watching the NBA on TV with no names on the jerseys and all the faces blurred out. Writing style without names would be (in some but not all cases) like trying to identify players by their shoes, tattoos or morphology (read: mostly freakish tallness).
This is an interesting observation. I don't watch basketball, but usually when I watch sports, I watch for skill, and don't really care who is performing it. If you see a brilliant shot it doesn't matter who did it, so the names and faces might as well be blurred out.
That it would be unpleasant to the watcher if the names and faces were blurred out, implies that the celebrity nature of the activity holds much importance.
Haha, just saying, FWIW, because your comment was interesting.
I would posit that the celebrity nature of professional sports is the biggest contribution to making them becoming huge money-making enterprises in the last few decades. If you made all players anonymous, I would bet money that the enterprise would shrink and become a more local phenomenon.
I can't remember who, but someone observed that (according to them) the reason people will emotionally invest in teams, players, artists etc., instead of just cheering for whoever performs best at any given time, is that they like to bet something. There's a risk if you have a favorite team or player and they might lose, because then you lose: so, there's some excitement to be had not just over the play but also the ultimate result.
How this relates to the present topic I don't know; hell, I'm not even sure this hypothesis is correct. I just think it's interesting.
While I do see the value of having a profile picture, the comparison you draw here doesn't hold. To answer this comment of yours, an avatar and a username are "so different" in the sense that comics and novels are different: they can both tell stories, but the degree of freedom of imagination on the reader's part is larger in the latter case (this is only of minor relevance, but it takes apart your argument).
Two, getting a username is considered a sunk cost, one many are willing to pay, but setting up a picture is an additional cost; some will pay, but I would wager many of us here won't bother. However, once you set up the option, there will be a "ah, they're the ones who like to update their profile pic!" and "ah, they're among those who simply don't care!" Assume many people don't bother, you still need to make do, which is your current situation.
Third, user-selected pictures carry a lot more information than just the usernames, and this information may simply detract from the core of the site, which is the content and discussion. If you treat usernames just as differentiating handles, they currently serve exactly that purpose.
Of course, you will be right to say that pictographs can be more efficiently retrieved from memory here, but the case doesn't seem strong enough to spur investing time into accommodating the functions in the code. I agree with pg above in this thread.
