[NeoStats-Devel] Forum updates

A couple minor changes.

1) All occurences of "feature requests" in forum names and descriptions have
been changed to "suggestions". This is based on a conversation Justin and I
had a while ago where we decided the subtle change to "suggestions" will
remove the implication that a suggestion will be implemented in a future
version. It may also help us get more feedback since we are not limiting
conversation to specific feature requests.

2) Added a new forum for older NeoStats version posts. At the moment this is
just a dumping ground for posts about very old versions but utlimately will
become storage for 2.5.x posts once 3.0 is released.

I am also wondering whether we should rework some of the main forums in a
similar way to the way we did the module forums.

We currently have NeoStats general/support/requests and a separate but
rarely used general forum. We always get people posting support and
suggestions in the neostats general forum and we have a mix of "official"
posts which have nothing to do with the software itself in neostats general
and the general forum. 

I like the split of forums for our purposes, but in reality, since users
refuse to use them that way and the moderators we have, have better things
to do than manage the posts, maybe we should give in and change the
interface to support the lack of respect users have for the current system. 

I am thinking of dropping general in it's current form and replacing it with
an "off topic" forum where users can talk about anthing unrelated to
neostats if they so wish and we can redirect any posts in other forums here.
In addition, add a new forum for topics unrelated to the software itself to
handle all the "official" posts about the web site, forum changes, mailing
lists etc. This forum would be writable only by moderators if we can allow
replies but no posting. Then combine what is left in neostats general and
support into a single forum to match the way we treat modules now. 

This leaves the neostats suggestion forum which is basically several "where
is windows support" posts which will be redundant once 3.0 is released and
requests for additional IRCd support. So a couple of options here, rename it
to IRCd support requests or drop it completely and merge it with the new
neostats forum. It is the forum I like most since it is a sort of todo list
for things we might want to do, but since users are unable to place
suggestions here, I am not sure it is worthwhile maintaining. Most
suggestions other than IRCd support requests are for modules so the recent
suggest a module forum will keep the todo element for the majority of
requests. 

One final consideration is should we continue to archive redundant posts? As
mentioned above, I have added a forum for posts on old versions of NeoStats
and although once 3.0 launches, a database of 2.5.x posts might be useful,
but, will posts back to 1.x and 2.0.x be a useful repository to retain? We
can create an automatic expiry for the off topic forum to keep it up to date
if we so desire, but my main concern here is the on topic forums.

One alternative to deleting posts is some sort of hybrid of threads on the
same topic. E.g. we make an "official" post on say windows support and
attach all posts about windows so a search will bring up the single post.
Not sure how easy this is within the BB software but is something I would
favour over deletion where necessary. Windows support is a bad example since
it will be available in 3.0 so deletion is the better option. 

Anyway, it is something I have been thinking about for a while but I will
not made a change which will result in deleting posts until I get an idea
about what others think on this.

Mark.