TryNinja's post is probably going to be the most helpful here, but I'd like to add that the merit system was probably the biggest thing to come along since you've been away (I assume you've been away). The garbage posting due to signature campaign shitposters was getting so out of hand that Theymos felt he had to implement it.
Because of it, it's much
much harder to rank up nowadays, and this kills at least two birds with one beautiful stone: new members can no longer expect to earn much in campaigns, and it's almost impossible to be an account farmer who creates a bunch of accounts and ranks them all up in order to sell them. It's an elegantly-designed system and one which I'm grateful we now have.
The DT system has gotten kind of weird lately, and I haven't even been following the list anymore. There's been a ton of drama since at least December of last year about certain folks being on it, and I think Theymos felt he also had to act on that. And then the flag system....not sure if it's an improvement or not, but that's one of the most recent changes.
Hey--two years gone, and I bet when you came back you were expecting the new forum software to be up and running, right? Right? lol
Edit:
Don'tcha love SMF though
? Still amazing how much bounty was paid to non-existent forum software.
I do like the SMF software, though! As far as the donations and what you call bounty, that's not for me to question since it doesn't represent any of my money and I don't have a clue what the forum does with that money. There's got to be
something in development, eh?
