Although, technically there are two photos. There is one that only appears on your profile, and a second picture that is put beside your posts. I think this may be where some of the confusion comes in. According to the forum software, the picture on your profile is called a "member photo" and the picture that appears next to your posts is called an "avatar" (See your control panel, Change Member Photo and Change Avatar sections) so being more personable not withstanding, the two terms should probably be not used interchangeably. Especially since the two terms mean different things. A "member photo" is a photo of a member, while an "avatar" is defined as a graphical representation of a person, typically a virtual or idealized representation.

If the intention, or even the standards or rules, of both of these images are the same, perhaps they should be merged to a single photo that would be used on the profile and beside posts?

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