Tin Roof,
We have always gotten good ideas from members for improving the forum. The big problem has always been that the people who want the improvements aren't equipped to do the work. So it always has devolved on the members who are most familiar with the subject and the forum to implement the best ideas. As a practical matter, that has meant that the Moderators had to do it, since they were often the most familiar with the subject matter, the layout of the forum and some of the administrative aspects and they could coordinate efforts as needed with Steve. Just about everything you see in the way of tools and aids on the forum were as a result of the work of the Moderators and Steve. It perhaps was easier to do these sorts of things when the forum was smaller and the time spent moderating the forum was a lot less. But as the forum has grown, it has become increasingly difficult--for me at least--to even think about participating in a major revamp or reconstruction of the forum.
To give you an example, a while back I created lists of recipes at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8297.msg71576.html#msg71576 and at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11860.msg110288.html#msg110288. I created the lists so that members could find at least some of the forum's recipes easier without always having to ask the members for them. I really didn't want to do the job because I knew it would be a tedious, time consuming job. But I did it anyway. I think you can see how much work went into finding the recipes, reviewing them, and then creating the lists (which I also now update from time to time). From my perspective, what is needed is more people to do the work. Until they volunteer, I think it is going to be hard to see major improvements in the forum's operations. That is one of the reasons why the Moderators have been trying to encourage the members to make more use of the search tools to find things and to do small things like posting in the right place, selecting descriptive topics headings, using the forum's Pizza Glossary and the like.
On a more positive note, it is perhaps fortunate that Steve decided on an indexing format for the forum. At the PMQ Think Tank forum, which uses a chronological posting system, users have no choice but to use the search engine to find things after about three days worth of posts. Steve's recent efforts to rid the forum of spammers and troublemakers has also been a major positive. I remember waking up every morning and rushing to my computer because I knew that there were spammers who hit the forum while I was asleep.
Peter
