As we deal with an issue on an overtaxed database, we have turned off the display of user avatars on the site.  Once we have completed some backend work with the database servers we will turn these back on; this should be in a day or 2.  Until that point, everyone will be showing the default avatar.

These are now re-enabled for the time being.  If we encounter future issues before the database work is completed we may need to turn them off again