How does one upload or link to an avatar picture that is not among the standard choices?

Feature not enabled.

Ok, thanks!

if you search help for avatar, it says you can...don't know if you can change that...

The software supports it, yes. We have it turned off, and there are no plans to enable it.

Not even as a feature for people with high enough post-count?
Maybe after personalized title?

Not that I am saying that it should be enabled or anything, but I am curious as to why it was decided to not enable custom avatars?

Mainly, because we didn't feel like policing them. This is the same reason that we don't have the ability to post images enabled as well.

Dumpshock is SFW (Safe for Work) by nature of being mostly a text based medium. We want to keep it that way. Enabling users to upload their own images (Either as avatars, or in general) just opens up a big potential headache with people adding in stuff that's NSFW. With as busy as all the mods are with Real Life, it's sometimes a day or two before we catch stuff, even when it gets reported.

In the end, it was just an extra headache we decided to avoid. We did put a lot of work into ensuring that there were a large number of Shadowrun images avalable (and by We, I mean John Dunn and Redjack, I think).

Bull

And having to upload the Images to Dumpshock and having a Mod or Admin judge them is not feasible either i guess.
How many Users are there registered on these boards as of right now? Several hundred ot thousand?
That would become much too much work for the guys i am afraid.

The technical numbers are 10,000+ members of the forums, with probably an average of several hundred active at a time. The admin/mod crew is 15 strong, with about 6 of us really active. Yes, we don't have time to review all of your pics and posts and even think about doing anything else with our forums here

I got some nice avatars I'd like to upload. One where this chick is jogging and her boobs are so big they bounce bounce bounce! also some still pics of nice boob shots. Trust me you will all like them!