Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-4651179-20130114214441/@comment-1895174-20130115054102

Sure.
 * AD: Oh, and if your logic is going by the character's most recognized over time, we should put a image of fatty bucket-hair cut Doc Ock, and not the most recent one... Someone can be mislead because they see him with 8 tentacles instead of one, oh noes!
 * LW: As far as I'm concerned, bowl-cut Doc Ock is a better profile picture than what's currently used. It at least shows him as Doctor Octopus, which is how the character will always be known.

The point is that the fat, bowl cut image of Dr. Octopus at least depicts Octavius as Dr. Octopus, his most notable identity; therefore, it is a better profile image for the page than the currently-used picture of him as the Spider-Man. My point is not that a classic image of the character makes for a better profile picture than a current one, as is indicated in your post. Furthermore, you bring up Andy Nominus' valid objection without bringing up either of my proposed solutions to the problem. Since Nominus (at least initially) did not understand what I had meant, I'll rephrase them here:
 * 1) A test - What disambiguation page does this character's name redirect to?  This only works for Earth-616 articles, since the Earth-616 is the "main" Marvel universe that all others are based on (to varying degrees).  Take, for example, Peter Parker.  Although Peter Parker has gone by many aliases, "Peter Parker" redirects to "Spider-Man". Since "Peter Parker" redirects to "Spider-Man" and not any of the other aliases he has gone by, such as Captain Universe, this is the is the wiki's tacit approval of Spider-Man as Peter Parker's most notable alter ego/identity. Therefore, Peter Parker's Earth-616 page should then have a profile picture that depicts him as Spider-Man.  Going off that same logic: "Otto Octavius" redirects to Doctor Octopus, so his profile picture on his Earth-616 page should be that of Doctor Octopus.
 * 2) A voting mechanism for profile pictures.  Lock all profile pictures so they cannot be changed by any ordinary user.  Users are then able to nominate potential profile pictures on a specific page designated to serve this purpose, which are then voted on by the community for a specific period of time.  Should the vote for a change in the profile picture be in the affirmative, the picture will be changed one week after voting closes.  It should be noted that the primary purpose of such a voting system is to prevent spoilers from leaking onto a page, and that the precise issue that started this discussion was users changing the profile picture for Otto Octavius (Earth-616) to that of him as Spider-Man before Amazing Spider-Man #700 was released (thus violating the spoiler policy).  I don't know if this could be implemented here for technical reasons, but I've seen it used on other wikis (particularly the Avatar wiki) to great effect.