I don't think any of the current mods were modding when that happened so i'll take this question.

When the current ownership took over the site they disabled a hell of a lot of features.

The arcade went
The member list went
The who's online feature went (The one that tells you which threads people are looking at, not the one on the main page)
The today's birthdays feature went
The newest member feature went
The chat room went

And also when you clicked on New Posts it showed you all the posts that were replied to since you last logged on and continued to do that until you logged off again, visiting those threads didn't take them off the list like they currently do now. I believe someone was asking about this earlier in the thread... Well we used to have that feature.

So basically a hell of a lot of stuff people are asking for we used to have here at sometime and no matter how many times the admin was asked to reinstate some of them we never found out why they were removed or ever got a straight answer as to whether we'd see any of them again.

I've never been a member of a forum with an arcade, what the heck is it?

Yeah, please, not a clue what this is.

I think it would be fairly simple on this type of forum to allow users to create their own colour schemes from a palette, and even allow them to create their own banners. These could theoretically be approved for public use and made available to other users to select as a site scheme.

pretty much just a collection of really outdated flash games, but it was pretty fun

yeah , there is another forum I go to and they have different skins that you can apply through the User CP somewhere.

I like this blue so I wouldn't change it but there is a way to apply different skins.

Especially with a layout that's so basic. It's not as if there's heaps of formatting to work around. It would be fairly easy for users to customize colours and a banner to match.

Please keep the colours down. Change it if you will, but it's very easy to the eye.
If a forum becomes all flashy and with loads of contrast, I go bezerk.

If the added the option that I'm talking about you can leave it this color while other people can add a different skin if they want type of thing.

You'll never see the color change unless you go over to that person's house and are on their computer looking at the forum.

As far as my knowledge about forums goes, the colour is stored in the profile of that user, so every user will see his or her own colour when he or she logs in :).
SMF does support that, I'm not sure about SEO

What do you mean by SMF and what does SEO mean?

I use another forum that also uses v.bulletin format like this forum and they have skins that each user can choose, four options actually.

This forum is an SEO forum, look at the bottom of each page:
My own forum runs on SMF (Simple Machines Forums)

oooh okay

do you know what SEO breaks down to mean?

Simple what what?

Search Engine Optimized Forum.
Ergo: A forum with which the owner can make as much money as possible.

Oh okay hmmm

I'm going to check the other forum and see what type it is.


Edit:

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.5
Copyright ©2000 - 2011, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.1.0 ©2007, Crawlability, Inc.

that's the info I got. I guess they are SEO as well. So that means we would be able to have skins on this forum if they can do it but one thing I don't know is what vBulletin Version MB uses. I guess I could find that easily.

I'm not sure if it's possible on this forum. But on another forum I go to they have a follow feature. If you like the way a person posts or what ever You can click follow and anytime that person posts. You get notified each and every time.
Just an idea take it as you will
thanks

Ok yeah. I love outdated 8-bit and flash games. Bring it on. Might be good if I get bored or something.

I'd like to show some support for two of the better ideas I've seen on the OP list. That is the notifications when you get visitor messages, and extra PM space.

Also, separating Metal and Rock into two separate subforums, or at the very least putting a sub-subforum for death and black metal in the same way as the prog section branches off from the main rock/metal section.

There's an extent to which I like this idea, but it would have to be more complex than that. Users would need the ability to opt out of being followed by others, and anybody blocked by them would have to be unable to use the feature (to avoid harassment).

idk the reason I don't like this idea too much is because you can already look up a poster that you like and just view all of their previous posts if you wanted to.

I don't think there is a need for a follow option imo.

That seems kind of stalker-ish to me...

True I figured throw out an idea to help keeping the ideas flowing in this thread. Better to have to many ideas thrown out there than having hardly any being thrown.

I think it has merits, and while it can be construed as creepy, I don't think it would actually be so in practice. I can think of a few people off the top of my head whose posts I always enjoy, because they are informative and thoughtful, and I find myself following them into threads because typically, they are generating worthwhile discussion.

Suggestion : New Members Forum which is inaccessible to all and everything with a post count below 100. That includes invisibility from feeds generated by/for users without access and invisibility to search bots such as google's.

Reasoning can be found here : http://www.musicbanter.com/announcem...ers-forum.html

I like this idea.

Co-signed

Ok guys, I'm planning on submitting the list to the admin soon, so if there are some things you have suggested, or really want, that have not been included in the list, write a brief description as a reply. If it doesn't get included, it was probably too ridiculous or completely impossible. Other than that, I'll include what hasn't already been outright denied.

You have a day or so to point out anything I've missed in the thread, or re-state anything that wasn't acknowledged. I WILL SUBMIT THE FINAL LIST THURSDAY!

Hey mods, anyone know why when I add someone and they accept the request they don't show up in my friends list? I mean, they have a little + next to their name, so what's the deal?

^^Hmm, that's strange...Are you sure they accepted your request? The little + will appear next to their names even if they don't accept it yet.

If you haven't submitted the list yet, I'd like to add two more suggestions I've seen lately.

1) Timestamps in the shouty.
2) Adding the N word to the word filter.

lets get some time stamps in the shoutbox

Timestamps in shoutbox would be a cool idea, I think. Another forum I'm on has this feature, and it's great because you can see right away when the last shout was posted instead of clicking on the archives (to do that here, just click "shoutbox")

Turn this off.
Both of it :D
I wanted to point out the 15 second rule is really annoying. I see it at least 25 times a day. And those useless links. Get it away, aargh!

The 15 second thing is nothing. I was once part of a forum (now defunct and offline) that made you wait 30 seconds between searches.

The only thing I miss about modding was I didn't get that damn 15 second rule then.

And the 200 pm spaces.

It's awful. After I read a topic I always hit 'new posts' to get back to the new posts. I don't want to click back and see the same postings again. But then I get this horrible window. So what I do now is click new posts, open all topics that are of interest to me by middle clicking the http://www.musicbanter.com/images/buttons/firstnew.gif button and then read the tabs, one by one. For those who don't know; Middle click = open in background tab.

My middle click is set to toss grenades. :(

What, in firefox? :D.
What's the use of that?

Well, I programmed the middle click to route to a particular key on my keyboard that throws grenades in Bad Company 2... and I'm too lazy to make another profile to switch between.

Will that matter, or does Firefox ignore keymaps?

I think firefox ign... wait, it's easier to just try it :D.

You must read really fast then :)

And the middle click thing would be useful if I had a mouse with 3 buttons. Or rather, if I had a mouse at all.

It opens in a new tab. Sweet. I never knew that.
But I have my options set so that any link I click (away from site) opens in a new tab, with focus set on that tab. This (middle click) rounds it out so that I can do that within the site. Usually I'd just right click and select it to open in a new tab.