You are correct. IMO this should be a plugin and NOT a core feature...

:) yes, you can't off :)

aw. Walter makes me cry :'(

I agree with Tblue on this. I wish the core was really tight on the bits it absolutely needs to be a blog/CMS (or is it a CMS/blog?), including awesome hookage for plugins. Like avatars, of which there are at least 3 already out there.

Another one is those fields like YIM and ICQ and AIM. I'm hip to how I can make a new section on a profile the way "Use smilies" does for example, but wow it would be so cool if we could hook into "Additional info" box instead of creating a new one.

hmmm... I just noticed something that might be a bug, so I'll go whine over in that forum next ;)