Improving Gamingforce

Adding recaptcha to registration will eliminate all but the actual human spammers, and it's easy as heck to set up on vbulletin. Don't know if it's a feature supported by 3.6.8, though.

During the first year or two I actively posted here, I got the impression that the community was extremely hostile to new faces. Far more so than anywhere else I've ever posted. It might just be a consequence of the close-knit nature of GFF, but the atmosphere here has always struck me as one that'd intimidate people who weren't already forum-hardened into leaving almost immediately.

always thought this place needed to collectively take a deep breath and count to ten

Jam it back in, in the dark.

A front page for a small-ish forum is a bad idea. Conversion rate for registration is far higher when people land directly on the forum index. Most won't even realise this place has a message board if they don't see one immediately upon arrival.

I'd wager most of the incoming traffic here is driven by people finding individual threads through google. Incite people to join and they'll do so.

How ya doing, buddy?