Static placeholder image avatar

[TheVillageGuy]

Users without an Avatar don't appear in the activity boxes

I'd like new and existing local users to be automatically provided either a default avatar, or preferably an automatically generated one. Perhaps a black and white, or grayscale template, where the colours are generated based on the username

I've considered doing it by hand, but this would have to be done everytime a new user is created

I have succeeded in displaying a default avatar when a user doesn't have one, but that won't look very nice in the active people box.

[TheVillageGuy]

Using default avatars for users without one:

[e-five256]

Not sure I agree with actually generating random images and storing them, that seems like a large cost for instances with tons of users where it already is prohibitively expensive running Mbin compared to other software

I think using an avatar set wouldn't be a bad idea. Especially if we could make it just the software logos for the user. We could know what software the instance the user is from is running due to nodeinfo (though we might not currently be parsing and storing that like lemmy does), so doing something like the lemmy icon for lemmy users, mastodon for mastodon users, etc, would be nice.

Then again, not really sure how I feel about assigning avatars to users that choose not to have one, as it seems like it was their choice not to have one, and to present the user any other way is against their choice, but I think that opinion is in the minority as there were even scripts to add icons to avatar-less users for /kbin, and lemmy does add the lemmy icon for all users without an avatar, regardless of them being lemmy users or not.

[TheVillageGuy]

The generated avatars don't have to be big, 32x32 or maybe 64x64 jpg

About the choice, I'd suggest generating one, then giving them the option of removing it or uploading their own instead of not giving them one.

[TheVillageGuy]

I'd like to say that having the default avatars looks better than having none, It just looks more uniform. https://rimworld.gallery/all

[github-actions]

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[melroy89]

The generated avatars don't have to be big, 32x32 or maybe 64x64 jpg

I'm more in favor or just a single static (reusable) placeholder avatar image instead.

Don't try to generate those avatars, it's just too much waste storage space. It doesn't add value anyways.