After I scanned through the above black and glassy sea of texts... I really want to add a few points that I would like AG3 Forums to have:

1) Preview System:  Just like Adrokila said about the "preview" system. It would be better if a forum allows a user to check and preview his or her posts. "So as to reduce mistakes, and prevent fail links." said Adrokila.

2) Key-Word Searcher:  I would be very happy if the coming AG3 forums have a intra-forumic searcher. A searcher helps user to find particular key-words within a target thread or post. Some other forum has its key-word searcher bonded with google-search engine, in order to reduce usage of internet resources and has high searching tech. <---- If you ask me why a internal-search engine helps, I would say a searcher helps user to find certain topics that are related to what they want to know. Besides, it can eliminate the time that should be originally consumed by users to "climb up" a thread. Just like what i did before posting here. Moreover, one of the most common mistakes made by forum users is "double-posting", which in other words, posting the same idea or topic within a topic that were mentioned not so long ago(e.g. at the previous few pages.) Copy-cat posts are annoying and space-consuming, but a searcher can certainly help solving this problem.

3) Spamming Issue:   When I caught a little sight about the topic "spammerland", the first thought that came up my mind is that "Every single forum cannot and will not escape from spamming, why just don't open a land for those spammers to spam their posts?". Of course, I'm not encouraging any spamming action amoung any forum. I  refer "spamming" is just incoherent chating,"spammers" are people who really like to talk but only simple and pure talks without contructive sharing for chating with other users or getting points only. While "spammerland" refers to a new thread such as called "Babblingland", in a more positive name for posts lacking intelligence to go. I found this successful in some forums(other websites) luring large fraction of spammers into this kind of thread from other serious threads. Well,therefore much easier for mods to cope with spamming problems.

There are actually much more functions I would like to suggest for AG3, but I don't want to press too much stresses on the AG3 forums developing group. The above are my most-wanted. I deeply appreciate developing group's efforts on creating a better forums for us users. Thank you so much and good luck.

Okay, so, spent a few moments on the Beta just now. I am REALLY liking what I'm seeing. It's nice to know that you all care about our requests and improvements rather than just being involved in self affairs. Just like with a business, it's us as the players that help make Armor Games what it is, and the Beta looks fantastic...I cannot WAIT to see this thing in full action...

OR secretly just not award points for comments under 3 (or 7) words but let them show up

well, (a) we're not awarding points for forum posts, and (b) keeping spammy replies makes the forums look trashy.

There should be a separate section for contests.

The problem there is that the contests that are put in the forums are generally about a topic within that forum, ie a poetry contest in the creative writing forum, etc.

I think the forums could do good with a 'preview' button

Key-Word Searcher

This is typical with more forum engines, but since we don't know which engine we'll use, I can't speculate on any of these ideas.

"spammers" are people who really like to talk but only simple and pure talks without contructive sharing for chating with other users or getting points only.

Hopefully since we won't award points for forum posts, the 'spammers' will use their activity stream comments to have these sorts of conversations. Our moderators will be instructed to direct side conversations to status updates/comments, or private inbox messages.

As a followup, we have to disqualify vBulletin from our list of choices, their technology requirements don't line up with what we'll have available.

What technology requirements do you want?

I was wondering if it could be possible to display images, links, quotes etc directly in the text box.

Kevin, we're already examining several. We didn't have vBulletin on the list because it's a commercial application, but after examining the requirements we realized the technology wasn't compatible.

Gaboloth, I don't understand your question. Are you saying that if you link an image, that you want to see it in the editor box while you're still typing? That kind of thing?

Kevin, we're already examining several. We didn't have vBulletin on the list because it's a commercial application, but after examining the requirements we realized the technology wasn't compatible.

Isn't it all HTML, though? I'm sure you can remove certain parts of it.

Ultimately it renders HTML for your browser, but the technology that *generates* that HTML needs to be compatible with our servers. For example, vBulletin only supports one type of database engine (MySQL) which we do not use, and cannot use in parallel with what we already have, so because vBulletin is inflexible in this regard, we must disqualify it from our research.

We should have specific FORUM MODERATORS so that we can pay attention more to that as the other moderators look at the comments. I'm such a genius