[digitalpoint]

Since I'm sure someone will ask how to make a custom setting that users can use to disable Thread Avatars just for themselves, you can go to AdminCP -> User Profile Fields -> Add New User Profile Field

Choose the "Single Selection Radio Buttons" option. These are the settings I use for digitalpoint.com:



An important thing to note is what the internal field ID is for your new setting. In my case it's 21... so in the plug-in, we are reading field21.

Create a new plug-in like so (do NOT pick the Thread Avatars as the product since it would get overwritten on an update):



You now should have a setting that users can set in their UserCP settings that allows them to toggle Thread Avatars on/off.

You can use a similar plug-in to set the $show['hide_thread_avatars'] variable to "true" for other things if you want (per style, per usergroup, etc.)