I think simply for bandwidth we should keep the ranking system like we had before. All of those avatars go into your browser cache so they aren't forced to be downloaded by your browser over and over again. If people are constantly uploading new avatars to the site (If I understand how that works correctly, and not that they just link to their site, which is what should be done) that will slow the load time down significantly for 56K folks, and it will also make the site eat up bandwidth much faster. Bandwidth is not cheap, and a few months the site ran out before the end of the month without all the fancy images. Personally I like the old style, but it's Matty's choice!

Maybe give special avatars to distinguished posters that aren't admins. Like CrazyCanuck should have a calculator, etc! I think all avatars/titles/etc should be in the hands of the admin's though!