James,
I understand what you are saying, but there is an opposite side to the argument. Gravatars are the most commonly used profile photos on the internet. Many of our subscribers appreciate that they do not have to assign a user profile photo because it is already recognized from previous sites they have joined. We actually made that change as a convenience to our users as many subscrivers already had Gravatars registered from sites like WordPress.com, StackOverflow, Github and Disqus to name a few. Disqus was the biggest decider for us as many tech news websites use them for article comments.
I know that is not the answer you wanted to hear, but I hope it helps you understand why we made that decision.
Thanks,
Don Pezet
Host, ITProTV