[Determined]

Dear staff,

I got a message from a member asking me to remove my avatar since it was his design. I did remove the avatar of course. However, I was not aware of this avatar being his intellectual/creative property.

This is why: when you modify your profile, you can choose an avatar from the gallery, and there it shows some options (musicians, actors, none and a little rocket). Since I didn't want to choose a celebrity, I chose the cute rocket. Nowhere was it mentioned this avatar was someone else's design and that you weren't allowed to use it. In fact, who would assume that you cannot use it if it is offered in the user settings in the first place? I think this is a shortcoming of this website, because new members might make the same mistake.

Also, now someone feels angry with me about this (which I can imagine were I to know it was not mine to use!!). And what's worse, I can't even reply to him, explaining the situation.

Why can't I reply or send messages?

Kind regards,

Determined.

[Determined]

Here's the user settings:

[billnotgatez]

@Determined
I can address the messaging question you have.
We were getting members spammed at a high rate using the messaging system by very new people.
So we restrict the ability to message until we are sure they are not spammers.
After a few posts on the system we determine you are safe and let you do messaging.

The mods will talk among ourselves and ponder the avatar situation.

[Borek]

I got a message from a member asking me to remove my avatar since it was his design. I did remove the avatar of course. However, I was not aware of this avatar being his intellectual/creative property.

Sorry about it.

The user added the avatar to the public list of avatars but they don't want everyone to use it. Forum software doesn't allow for individual avatars. The user was told several times it is and is going to be public and as such can be reused by others, and we are not going to rewrite part of the forum software just to accommodate for his particular situation. Unfortunately he still complains