Hello, thank you for flagging this. Our getting started guide has just been updated and reuploaded to reflect a small change, which is that we are encouraging members to consider how private they may wish their profile to be, and have taken the decision that in considering whether to relax our privacy settings and thus who can view the forum, members are discouraged from having a photo of themselves as their avatar.
I have just uploaded the new guide to getting started here Guide to getting started which explains this. Sorry for any confusion this has caused - you are free to keep your avatar as a picture if you prefer, as long as you feel comfortable with this.
Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions,
Dawn