(Disclaimer: these are all my own personal opinions, and should not be taken as an official policy statement on behalf of the site staff.)
I guess I'll take up the "moderately against" argument. I'm not generally a fan of animations in avatars, because I think they're typically poorly-done and distracting. I don't think this is just due to a file size limit, like "oh I could only make an annoying animation because I don't have enough frames"; usually, I think it's more an issue of concept/design than execution. I suspect that allowing double the file size for the same 100x100 pixel square will just encourage people to use
that much more animation, and it isn't something I see as so important to encourage. I would rather the page load more quickly on my sadly-not-too-great broadband connection (1.5 mbps) and mobile phone when on 3G (which has a 1 GB monthly data cap). I'm not convinced that increasing the file size limit will encourage most people to make
better avatars, but just to be more wasteful/sloppy and do less optimizing -- it'll could double the data pulled for some avatars without any tangible benefit to me.
That doesn't mean I'm dead-set against an increase, but I'm not really
that sold on the need for it either. The "HD anime art is more complex" argument only goes so far when you're talking about a 100x100 pixel square, and I'm not convinced that most people will use the additional file size effectively even if you give it to them. I think it's really a problem of education more than limitation. I suppose I could support a modest increase (call it "art inflation" or something
), but I'm not convinced that a drastic increase is needed, warranted, or all that beneficial.