Tiny profile icons in comments

Question

Why not have our profile pictures display next to our name in comments on the side:

Lorem ipsum etc. etc. - haykam

Or on the other side:

Lorem ipsum etc. etc. - haykam

Answer 1

While I personally don't want to have this, I found it an intriguing challenge.

So whenever you want to see the avatars in comments, open your browser's console and paste this:

var Position = {"Left": 1, "Right": 2};
var _size = 16;
var _margin = 5;
var _pos = Position.Left;
$(".comment").each(function() {
    var commentObj = $(this);
    var commentUser = commentObj.find(".comment-user");
    var userLink = commentUser.attr("href");
    if (userLink && userLink.length > 0) {
        userLink += "?tab=profile";
        var avatar = $("<span></span>");
        if (_pos == Position.Left) {
            avatar.css("margin-right", _margin + "px");
            avatar.insertBefore(commentUser);
    } else {
            avatar.css("margin-left", _margin + "px");
            avatar.insertAfter(commentUser);
        }
        avatar.load(userLink + " .avatar img", function() {
            avatar.find("img").css({"width": _size + "px", "height": _size + "px"});
        });
    }
});

You can customize it a bit:

• Change _size to have the avatars appear in a different size.
• Change _pos to change where the avatar appears, e.g. changing to Position.Right will make the avatars appear to the right of the comment author name.
• Change _margin to change the margin between the avatar and user name.

I'm not familiar with browser extensions/plugins, but surely it can also become one to have it apply automatically whenever you visit a post.

Answer 2

^{How does it look without pics? Cleaner.}

I'd rather not see it.

The first reason I can think of is, it's quite distracting to have a long comments thread with many small images. Unlike the longer answers - you can't see so many avatars on the page. It's uncomfortable to read that.

The other reason is, these avatars would be ridiculously small (because the s=16 does actually downsize the image, not collapse), probably even smaller than you suggested, because otherwise they won't fit.

And it does certainly eat bandwidth, especially if "there still is the 128*128 icon option and we could collapse that".