It's cool. I understand things can get pretty taxing, I haven't done a whole bunch of work on the back-end of a forum but I have dealt with similar issues. I'll just post anything I find helpful, just in case

I wouldn't make that assumption. The 2.x line is still all "release candidate" with its versions. Not ready for primetime, for my taste.

If you look at the bottom of the page you'll see the version we're on!

Ah, duh, I probably should have checked more thoroughly (brain fart) Anyways, I was going through the mod list for various SMF versions. A lot of good stuff there. But it's well.. a lot

We're *also* going to be giving most community topics about a 90 day window for inactivity before they go away -- but that's a manual (and now that I'm doing it, tedious) process and probably won't be done with high consistency. Pruning makes the database leaner, which will help the site function better.

Ouch. There's no way to add automatic topic pruning? Or is it just that doing so would prune off inactive topics that need to be kept like the rules, stickies, etc. ? If it's the latter, I'm sure something could be figured out to make it work and thus easier. But if it's just not available, you might want to look into it (or better, I'll look into it and provide links ), I'm 99% sure we had automatic pruning set up on the forum I ran for my last MMO Guild.

Really, if you're going to fix it, might as well fix it right the first time. I understand the desire for the "general discussion"/"helping hand" type forums, but it's only delaying the inevitable. Give enough people enough rope and people will start hanging themselves. Even with more moderator types it's just going to end up having those new moderators end up fed-up with stuff as well (I speak from experience here).

If these boards are intended to discuss Jim Butcher and his collective works, then 50%+ of the posts shouldn't be about things that have nothing to do with said topic, IMHO. I think between a chat and specified topic-oriented forums it's really going above and beyond.

I like this spoiler code much better than the old one! The old one wasn't 'bad' but it could get annoying when the last word or 2 of the spoiler didn't want to highlight with the rest or when on a laptop with default mouse, etc.

Problem with a 'resources sub-forum' is that it removes announcements intended to govern the parent-forum. However, there is a benefit to consolidating the stickies beyond cosmetics and accessibility. Simply, it cuts down on the number of threads, which should be a benefit considering the recent concern of topic pruning, etc.

A global "Read before posting" sticky would accommodate all the the administrative posts and even locked should still be editable by global admins. Followed by a "FAQ" sticky, pertaining to the base topic of the forum, which is fairly standard. Then a specialized sticky or 2 such as the "Short Stories" sticky (Personally I find this helpful as I tend to lose track of the Short Stories order and upcoming, etc.) would be a non-issue.

Not sure if you wanted to get this specific, but:

Harry met Michael (or Charity at least) at least 5 years prior to events in Grave Peril based off his discussion with Charity at the police station, which should put their meeting at around the same time he came to Chicago.