I have noticed this week (maybe today, although it might have been there Monday or Sunday and my mind isn't holding the information in an orderly fashion) that there are "faces" connected with some of the articles comments--mine, and John "A1nut"'s, and no others that I found on the first two pages of comments. Mine is a pinkish-purple (puce?) square with uplifted eyes and a smile, on a dark gray background; his is a light green octagon on a light gray background with one eye closed and a twisted mouth.
I can't figure out why or how they appear there; there is nothing in my profile about pictures or images, and Eric (who has commented frequently on the articles) does not appear to have one assigned to him. They don't appear on the boards themselves, only in the administrative areas for comment editing, but they have me wondering what changed, and whether it's cause for concern.
--M. J. Young
I didn't do anything like that.
If it's like with WordPress blogs, it's just a random image that the site gives you, and nothing to worry about. It would mean that it just makes sure that you have some kind of image. I guess it would help preventing accidentally skipping over that post.
I'm not seeing them, but I'm familiar with what you're talking about from reading a blog. I'm pretty sure it's email address based. Must have come from a software update that incorporated it into the blogging code, as previously it was an external utility.
Mine is a green smiley face, except with a straight line for a mouth, at least on that blog.
It is based on your email. I believe it's coming from the gravatar.com service, which is the default avatar thing Wordpress uses. I wouldn't worry about it and, if you want to change it, just google gravatar and mess with your settings there.
Wow... It worked! :D