I would agree with you if we were writing webpages. But we aren't. We are basically using a glorified chat program. I don't recall any of the big forum software solutions forcing paragraph breaks with the enter key. phpBB, Invision, SMF, etc. Every one of them that I have used in the past take a wordprocessor approach to the forums. Just to verify this, I went in and did a view source for a message. Line breaks, not paragraph tags. This is the only forum software that I've ever seen that forces paragraph tags, rather than line breaks. Obviously, it's your software, so what you say goes. But, this is a suggestion forum, and my suggestion is that there be an option of what setup you want. Or at least an easy way to hack in a change.
People generally type in a different style when they are communicating. IMs, Emails, Forums, etc. They all allow the person to have control over what their typing looks like. And to me, that is a tool. You said that this is HTML, which is true, but again, that doesn't mean we have to treat it like it's writing an actual webpage.
Anyway, enough with that discussion, you've heard my point of view, you either understand my issue or you don't. Either way. I had a couple more suggestions:
Allow Admin Post Styling
Could we have some css styling options for Admin posts? It'd be nice to be able to style a post differently if an admin is posting. Whether it be the post itself, or the area around the avatar (Preferrably both). Just setting a class there would be really handy in allowing us to make admin posts stand out a bit more on our forums. There is a similar thing for WordPress with post authors in comments. But when it comes to admin, you have to do some checks with WP functions to see if the user is an admin. But that's not even feasible in this sense. Anything we did would need to be hacked in, and that's not logical with a plugin that is going to be updated.
Don't make the edit line part of the post itself
Every time an edited post gets quoted, the edit information also gets quoted. Is this intentional? It quirks my OCD a bit. Could that be excluded from quotes, possibly?
Make Forum Stats Interactive
Lots of users are listed in the forum stats. For instance, the top posters, or the people currently logged in. It would be nice if you could click those users to bring up their profiles and/or most recent posts. Also, as a side note, some of the things in the forum stats could stand to be customizable. I have no moderators, so it doesn't need to display the lack of them. And maybe I'm overlooking something, but is there a way to customize how many Top Posters are listed? I seem to have 6 showing, which seems like an odd number. Is it determined based on the height of the table? Or is 6 just the number that was chosen? Etiehr way, some customization there would be nice, though not really important.
Don't want it to seem like I'm complaining. Just trying to give input and suggestions. People are loving the integration with WordPress on my forums. It's sad that you guys can do this so well, and the bbPress software can't even get it right. IMO, anyway.