When I first started this plugin I planned to make as much optional as possible. There is a philosphical divergence between my own thoughts on options and those of the Mullenweg. The 'WP Way' has always been to limit options as much as possible which, I believe, is one of the reasons so many small and unnecessay plugins exist that fill the gap enabling users to turn stuff on or off.
My own view is that options are great. The more the better. While recognising that some users are totally confused by all the forum options, when the 'serious' users get to know them all they generally like to have them. I will fight hard to keep options on the table!
Over subsequent releases we have both added lots of features (and yes – many new options also) but in many areas we seem to have moved away from offering options as a mattrer of course.
A good example would be topic view. What was once a single line of text (topic title) and page links if it had many posts, is now potentially a very crowded litrle box indeed. There are now potentially 5 status icons, a topic status description, a post rating agregation and tags. All squeezed in. And none of that display is optional. Yes – they can NOT use some of the features but they cannot make use of them and not have them show in this particular location.
I would like to change that, draw up a list of what we have left out, and create them now.
