I think I have to say that I agree with *some* of the points raised here, but not necessarily with others.
Firstly, I don't think it's true or fair to say that david doesn't care...
since I've been here david has changed everything from the forum software, to different (faster) hosts, alternate logos, added more avatars. change the themes, added new sections. changes peoples username as and when they asked him. as well as changing advertising providers many times when users have complained about adverts.
just because he didn't comment in this thread straight away I don't think it's fair to say that he doesn't care about the forum in such an absolute sense!
When I suggested making a donation to charity, it was just that.
1, a suggestion, (not laying down the law or making plans).
2, it was for charity, not paying this site for use of features that may or may not be implemented.
So far as a lot of other things in this thread goes... heres what I think.
Firstly, Avatars.
we get some new avatars every now and again, rather than just asking david for some avatars it'd be a lot nicer if someone came up with a set of new and original avatars, the last time they were updated was when a user here actually put time into creating new avatars, rather than just putting their time into shouting to the admin that they wanted new stuff. Custom avatars were outlawed a long long time ago, due to some people abusing the good nature of david (he let people upload avatars, and then they linked to the avatar uploaded here for other forums where you could only link to avatars.
Signatures
I don't see what's wrong with the sigs as they are.
Personally I'm in complete agreement with david on the signature issue, most people only want them so they can link to a web page (that's what the home page option in our profile is for!).
or they want to put images in there.
I hate image signatures, mostly because they are always too large.
truth be told a lot of users on here have trouble comprehending what six lines are, so there isn't even any sense in trying to suggest a plausible image size, cause no-one would pay attention to it!
The little titles,
I do think that a few more groups based on post count would be good, when I came here there was only one guru, (LK) and that actually seemed to mean something.. now we are practically all gurus. (example ordan Pardy has been here only three months and is already Guru... there does need to be a higher level than guru).
as for custom titles, firstly, I'm happy with moderator. it's to the point.
I agree that we should be able to recognise individual skill and ability with a new title, but this would be extremly hard to control! and to put it bluntly, I don't want my inbox flooded with requests to change peoples names from something to something. and I'm sure david doesn't either.
and as suggested earlier in this thread. there are people out there who simply couldn't be trusted to choose their own names/titles.
Personally I agree with Amish Kid (above), I can recognise when some people are extreemly helpful, and do want to reward people as such. but that doesn't automatically mean that I'll know what they want their title to be, and then we come back to the situation where people will have to ask... and as I said, I don't want to have to look at what people want their name to be!
so whilst I do think it's a good idea, it's a logistical nightmare, that probably couldn't be implemented easily, or fairly.
