I've been out of the hospital for a few days now and I just managed to finish all of the things I wanted to do while I was out of commission but couldn't. There are a lot of things going on in this update so let's go through them one at a time.

Avatars: Borrowing a bit from RoleplayRepublic, I thought it would make it much easier to remember or know who you're talking to if you can actually see their picture. I know I have a tough time remembering names by themselves but I have an easier time associating a name with a picture (until you change it anyway). Avatars showing up in comments, walls, PMs, etc is optional and can be set through the "Set avatar" link in your profile page found right below your profile image. If you want to keep your profile picture but don't want it showing up in your conversations, click on the "Remove Avatar from Listings Only" button.

Friendship Indicators: I figured it'd be useful to know whether or not the person you're talking to is already your friend or not and it would also be fun spotting your friends around.

Better Blocking: I should've done this a long time ago but I hadn't thought to do it until I had all that time to think. Before, blocking someone just meant that they can't respond to you or access your stuff although they could still see your content in site listings. Now, blocking someone should also keep them from seeing any of your content at all so that they no longer see your comments and posts nor your stories, blogs, discussions, etc from the site listings and vice versa.

Unlimited Messages by Non-Friends Now the Default For New Accounts: Now that we have better blocking, new accounts from now on will default to allowing unlimited messages by non-friends. In other words, new accounts will opt-in instead of opt-out to this setting but can change it to whichever is most beneficial to them in their account settings using the "Reduce Wall and PM spam" checkbox. This was a bit of a tough decision to come upon despite the new block improvement since many people enjoyed the spam reduction (I think it reduced spam messages by around 2 million per day). On the other hand, new users were getting penalized since they effectively couldn't talk to anyone outside of commenting on stories, blogs, and discussions. In this case, I'll try out letting new users discover the setting for themselves and opt-in if wall spam really becomes a problem for them. Hopefully, the new default balances the needs of new users to communicate and their reluctance with receiving wall spam from random members. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, I'm still in recovery (I shouldn't really be here!) so I can't do many more updates in the next few days or weeks. Hope all of your are having a good weekend! Take care of yourselves.