^^
yes exactly i concur. i hadn't even noticed it wasn't like that since i've only spent a few mins on the forums lately.
oh and also i think the forum format should change back to the old way. there's a reason that 99% of reputable forums on the internet keep everything "avatar-related" to the left side, instead of sprawling it out all across the page. it ends up in a lot of wasted space, and doesn't make the forums look "crisp" at all.
potentially putting a size limit on avatars would also be a good step in the right direction, since a large avatar just makes the wasted space even larger. it's also quite distracting, and makes the forum have a more "spam-oriented" feel to it.
maybe even eliminating large pictures/gifs in signatures might be advisable too, as some can be very distracting from the real conversation that's taking place in a thread, and a lot of them are just pointless. (i can't really see this ever happening though, cuz once people get comfortable with their sig pics they're not going to want to part with them. change CAN be a good thing sometimes, and even though i may get flamed for my ideas, you'll notice that the forum would definitely look a lot cleaner if my ideas were taken up).