I don't like the idea of avatars. We already have a bio field where people can "humanize" themselves on Hubski, with images and all the kit and caboodle. I think that avatars would just clutter that and cheapen the experience, I don't think they'd work in the way that you'd like them to. Imagine 100 users with pictures of cats, and you follow 5 of them. Which results in no gain due to avatars. I would never use one, and as an aside I hope we never have anything like the flair system on Reddit either. I'm just opposed to those kind of things. Seeing how much overall interaction I have with a person might be useful though. Going beyond how many posts of a person I've shared would be neat, I'd like to have a fuller picture of my interactions with a given person on Hubski. Maybe not as a hover but I'd like it better if it would come up when I click their name, if I opt-in to it. Seeing how often they post compared to me or when they joined relative to me is irrelevant, there's people that rarely post but when they do it's a joy to read, and I can just click the username to see when they joined. As for tagging a person, I'm completely indifferent towards it and have no argument for or against it. It's something that I don't think I would use, but could see it being beneficial as a whole. I agree with having these things be opt-in, if anything.
So color me weird, but... We're discussing UI here, and we're discussing UI changes that the user can make. We've got styles... or we did. I just tried to change mine and it's empty. Anyway - Our current UI kind of represents mk's whim more than anything else and, as I've mentioned before, your best hope resembles a Toynbee Tile more than anything else. If I had a Protopage-like UI builder I'd use it. If I had the ability to save those pages I'd share them. Hubski is, after all, a database with a web front end on it. We're all talking about ways to make that database more parse-able by the humans looking at the front end. The fact that I can see your page is pretty cool... but that's something you generated, not something you built.
That bug with your settings is fixed. An errant <p>. forwardslash implemented a faster parser for our markup last week and this was related. This thing has been a bear, but we are in a much better place. I agree with you and doesntgolf. "interested in" sucks. I often look at mine and think: oh, really? Social algorithms are built to fail. As b_b said, it was in response to a expressed need, but it doesn't succeed at filling it. I like veen's idea of previous dialogs/interactions. That, I would find interesting. I visit your profile, and I can see what we last chatted about. Maybe a link like: "Chatted with: 13 days ago". When you click the link, you see all of your previous discussions with that user. That kind of information is much more interesting and useful than an algorithm that can grow stale or miss the mark. That might not be the ideal implementation, but something along those lines. Simply listing the tags you've used is probably more useful than "interested in" for a new user checking you out.
That's still one of my favorite threads in Hubski history. I'm mostly okay with the current UI, but that's because I'm really not picky with those kind of things (though that is slowly changing). You say Protopage, I think Tumblr. I suppose it's more or the less the same thing though, being able to build your own page with a layout you want and whatever features you want. Assuming I'm understanding that correctly. Side note: What is your threshold for embarrassing number of badges and disturbing number of followers?
I've been on Tumblr like once and didn't really understand it. Protopage? Yeah, that I had to set up for my mother-in-law when iGoogle went away. Looking at it now, yeah - might as well start a Wordpress blog. That's why I said "protopage" - you get a limited number of colors, you get a limited number of layouts, you can put one (1) image behind it if you're really bent about it. Me? Give me colors and fonts and I'm good. one need only browse Reddit for a while to see what's possible within CSS.
The avatar thing is something I hate as well (as in, an avatar in the comment section). My idea for a generated one is just to get more people to choose some visual cue / identity over just a textual one, as others can recognise them better that way. So more people with a picture in their bio.