In the second example, taken from Woot.com, we can see that graphical avatars aren’t present, but the user has added in his own small picture, and also appended a custom signature that lists his “achievements” on woot; namely, those items that he’s managed to buy. Impressively, he has racked up 3 Bags of Crap (”Bandolier of Carrots”), which can earn him some definite credibility within this community. Although this sig is user-defined, he’s chosen to take the approach of listing Achievements instead of writing a bio or similar info; this may be a clue to the suitability of Achievements (visual or textual) to this communication space.

  PelicanParts, being a car community where grease-monkeys help one another, has a few interesting twists on the recognizable marks being shown in the profile. Since trust does play a bigger role in deciding whose mechanical advice one should follow, the Textual Achievement of number of posts is definitely a key metric to look at. The “Senior Member” that appears probably also gives more trust in combination with the # of posts, but unfortunately, those titles are member-defined.