Ok, this is my take on it since I have been poking around. My custom avatar shows up on both posts that I start and on posts that I have posted on. That is why you will see a tiny little rectangle at the right hand bottom side of a avatar and it means that you have posted on that thread. If you hover over that little icon, it will tell you how many posts you have in that thread. Now from what I can tell...the people who are blank...dont have an avatar at all in their signatures. Or maybe they didnt come over. There are different ways to send your avatar into this site, connecting it from photobucket or another such site, uploading it straight from your computer to this sight and then connecting straight from another site to this site. One of those may not work anymore. I uploaded mine straight to this site so it may now be stored on this site.