Okay, now I’m curious, gonna go look at the durn thing.
There is nothing there that says who the website belongs to, no Webmaster e-mail address, nothing.
Homestead is evidently like Geocities, in that they host webpages? And they also will help you design them? I’m assuming this is for a fee?
http://www.homestead.com/
http://www.homestead.com/~site/CompanyInfo/companyinfo.ffhtml
http://www.homestead.com/~site/productinfo/rules.ffhtml#TOS
Backing up one on Jally’s URL, to http://forumfeatures.homestead.com/files/ just brings up the same “Message Board Features Proposal” page.
From the website:
These are two demos posted of (I presume) actual message boards so you can see how well this “Open Links as Windows” idea works, whatever it is. The StarForum demo, I didn’t want to wait until the next glacial epoch for it to finish loading–this is supposed to be some kind of idea to speed up a message board? Sure didn’t work for StarForum, whoever they are.
The Afterburner demo is all in German, and since I don’t read German, I have no clue as to what exactly I’m supposed to be deducing from the demo.
Feature Two amounts to having exactly twice as many posts per thread–the posts themselves, and the editorial comment from the Original Poster as to whether each response to his thread is helpful, off-topic, etc.
Feature Four, the suggestions for icons to go in the thread titles, I’ve seen on lots of other boards, and you’re right, they are kewl. However, as has been discussed here in ATMB many times, (1) graphics eat up a lot of bandwidth, and (2) there are frequently problems with graphics copyright violations which the Chicago Reader doesn’t want to get into. At all. As the Administration has made clear, on many occasions.
And there’s more stuff, which are actually not “bad” suggestions, but it’s just that it all seems to be nothing less than a total revamp of the SDMB’s format. Is that what you want, Jally? All I can say is, if you don’t like it the way it is, whyncha go start your own message board? Other people do.