<...> But before Ive saw some member rank who are wearing it Im not sure how this happened actually. Maybe before their ranknis full member or got demoted when the merit system implemented.
Some of the exceptions to the general avatar Full Member requirement can be derived by going over
this thread.
Essentially:
- Old Accounts seemed to have no rank restriction back in the day for the Avatar. Restrictions were introduced
in 2015, after having been locked-in (*) for over a year due to an exploit.
(*) I’m not 100% certain if they were disabled or locked-in, but
reading this post, it seems as if they were locked-in (thus the reference in the post to
removing them manually).
It that is so, I figure older accounts may still have a locked-in avatar, not being able to change it until they meet the Full Member requirement.
- A few accounts get demoted because they delete (or the mod deletes) enough posts for their Activity to decrease to a lower rank. If a Full Member that wears an avatar does that, I believe he’ll still be wearing the avatar, but it will be locked-in (not automatically deleted).
- Exceptional cases were seemingly granted avatar privileges, without needing to meet the rank requirement (i.e. some of Bitcointalk’s account recovery team).