Agree Andy, and needs to be more user friendly. Being able to post photos would be good, whenever original poster posts in a thread it's mentioned they're the original poster, not into emogies, number of posts a member has made and as has been mentioned in the past would be good to know what people's skills are etc.
I think the reason why full-sized photos aren't allowed on many forums is that they take up so much storage (which costs the site owner lots of extra money) and phyiscal space on the threads (lots more scrolling for everyone).
Some go for a middle ground, allowing small linked thumbnails of the photos, rather thn just a hyperlink to the image only on a file sharing site. That does cut down the extra storage space required, but may still encourage more people to post thumbnails.
Less of a problem on paid-for sites I suspect than free ones like this that are run as a goodwill guesture and to help people in the door so they can read content with ads, which is fair enough.
I think your last two suggestions definitely are useful - that sort of thing is quite common on other forums and is a reasonable guide to the expertise of posters. Of the two 'up' or 'down' votes, I'd pick the 'up' if i had to choose for the same reason - people are far more likely to be objective by thanking someone for a good post. Oddly enough, the 'like' facility is available here, but only on the HJ Agony column, although the result doesn't seem to be shown.
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