Allow only GS-hosted avatars, banners

No bad idea. I like the idea of me having me images hosted them where I want them, not being forced to have them somewhere.Agreb91

i would really much rather not...i see no reason to implement limits such as that...especially seen as it'll just use up even more of GSs bandwidth in the end (due to every user having to use GSs bandwidth rather than their own photobucket/imageshack/etc. bandwidth)....and besides, if you dnt want to see non GS hosted avatars here's an option in prefs for it already...under images...there's also the option to not view avatars at all...and banners dnt really slow things down that much unless they're paricularly large files...in which case putting them on the GS server and then using them really won't make any difference...robbristow

I honestly don't see how anyone can be opposed to this if they get what I'm suggesting (again, not ALL images). It would only take an extra second to hit "upload" after pasting in the URL to the image you want to use, so 2 seconds out of your life to remove a massive annoyance for others. Of course, better still would be GameSpot allowing just useless images like avatars to be blocked in prefs without taking content pictures along with them, but if they won't do that, I'm stuck trying to figure out a way to make Adblock work for me.

I agree that the best solution would be an option to disable avatars, but that idea didn't get very far when I suggested it. Anyone who doesn't like this idea could show support for the toggle option in the thread I liked in the original post, hint hint. If we get enough people showing interest, it might stand out from the hundred billion other things the GS designers have on their plates.

I REALLY don't see how GS-hosting would be a hardship, though... you already have to paste the url to the image you want to use into your prefs, so all you'd have to do is take an extra second to upload it. If that's too much hassle, maybe GS could make it automatic... put a URL into the avatar field, and they automatically copy it to the GS servers and use that copy for your avatar.

IIRC, there was a rule like this in place a while ago because of an image exploit, and at that time there was no user image gallerys, but people still got through it.