As of today, there are many commenters on the Disqus network that look like this:

Either all of these commenters come from the same (question marked) mother, or we aren’t doing a good enough job encouraging people to set a buddy icon.

Why set a buddy icon (or avatar)? This seemingly trivial bit completely changes how involved someone feels with a website. Seeing faces makes the conversation come alive. It makes it that much more real.

Recently, I had a chat with my friend Joshua of del.icio.us. He offered that people will be more inclined to set an avatar if the default one is especially ugly. This thought may have merit. The default picture on Disqus isn’t particularly attractive, but it could probably be uglier.

New members of Flickr greet the photo world looking like this:

People on Twitter prepare their first tweet sporting this mug:

Ugly. I say this with no apologies to the respective designers because the ugly seems intentionally so. Those are grim, unfriendly faces.

Moving forward, I don’t think our strategy will be to make our default avatars uglier. I think we need to rework the entire experience of getting one’s smirking mug up on Disqus. One of the major changes that’s coming is a rework of our profile system. It’s going to be much more emphasized and central to the Disqus community. Part of this includes a better implementation of faces.

Because showing faces is important.