I originally come from another community whose forum is quite messy and thus not very efficient. This slows down users who are searching for information. And it takes some time for admins and contributors who keep repeating the same things over and over again. Overall I find the VLDP forum very neat and well organized. Yet I think it can be made even better.

I have a suggestion as far as requests are concerned. I thought about it when reading the change log (to check which functions are already available in VLDP) and reading the post "60 mods..." and thinking about the requests I want to make.

What would be nice would be some sort of SYSTEM TRACKING ALL THE REQUESTS in one bunch. This way, anyone who thinks of a request could easily check it before posting and see if it's already been requested, refused, accepted, put on hold...

Below is a proposition for such a system.

(R) stands for Request received (to be kept clear and one line short). Could be a link to a detailed post.
(A) stands for Answer given, possibly with explanation, if necessary.
(R005) this number helps identify requests and refer to them easily later on. The latest requests are added on top...

So, this request system could look like this:

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R005: Full privacy control for gold members = allow none / friends / anyone to see item X, Y or Z.
A: Accepted. It will be added to VLDP 3.0
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R004: Include video chat by default in VLDP
A: Refused. Too complex. Will never happen. Get a mod. Please check this MOD HERE.
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R003: Make admin's private messages html compatible
A: Already implemented in VLD 2.X.X
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R002: Make VLDP compatible with Atari.
A: Refused. This request is crazy.
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R001: monthly log of all private messages saved as html (to check unfair use, even months later)
A: We are thinking about it.
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R000: option to send newsletters only to NON subscribers
A: Accepted. It will be added to VLDP 3.0
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This could be listed on a page just like the change log is done... Or it could be published in the forum. Maybe a simple post here managed by admins would be enough. Each new request (regular post or private ticket received) would be added by admins.

I suppose that there should only be a few hundred requests a year... So the list would not get too long. Admins could use it as a reference to select the requests they decide to include eventually. And users would get an idea of the kind of requests that are accepted  or refused.

A great optional thing would be a poll system so that forum users may vote for the coolest / most desired requests. Because sometimes, requests by other webmasters make us realize we want the thing... This way, Vlad and his team would know which request are most in demand, STATISTICALLY.

We could collectively elect the top 50 requests to be included in the next version of VLDP. (Democracy, yeah!) The existing request system is good but lacks readability and synthesis... One has to basically read the whole thread to see what the status of the request is.

What do you think about that?