This is all excellent stuff. I agree wholeheartedly with every last point you make here. A lot of independent work has been done to address many of the issues you raise but the hacks are scattered across many different boards and it's hard to collect them all and stir them into one's own mix. It makes upgrading a nightmare. I've made so many changes to my newpost and edit scripts that it's become impossible to isolate them one from another and make any kind of clear abstract to share with the other people here. All these things *have* to be in the main distribution to be of any real use.
On the board I built for WOPR I simplified everything by eliminating a lot of choices. I removed the whole private messaging system. I required registration. They got one fixed layout (based on WebBBS, where we came from), no uploads, no digests. I used a lot of Javascript to aid navigation and put the whole thing in a split screen where they could see two screens at once. I haven't changed anything in a year and it gets a *lot* of traffic, with most of them checking in several times a day.
What I'm trying to say is, don't confuse them with a heap of options. Pick the one that works best for you and concentrate on making that childsplay to use.
I'm now going to print out your list and start working my way through it.
Thinks - there's a heap of eager customers out there for somebody selling customized versions of w3t...
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