I thought just the opposite that ET was the forum behind the times in terms of bells & whistles you get while a member. In fact, other trader forums have the following while ET does not and these are new things I've noticed within the past 5 years:
* You can see whom has thanked a message post.
* You can see how many times someone has given thanks or been thanked.
* Social network links are in the message posts and they don't pop up when your mouse passes over them. Thus, if you want to use them...you need to click on them.
Social media sites saids its the best way to do such and more forum members will use it...bringing more popularity to the forum via exposing the forum more across many networks. Heck, I don't even think ET has a presence (profile) on twitter like many of its sponsors.
* You can see whom has been reading your profile.
* Your profile contains a list of your favorite or recommended threads, threads you've visited the most, list of your attachments.
* Hosting free webinars
* Blog area (ET journal area is old)
* Ability to post more than one attachment in a message post.
* List showing most recent charts, most recent polls and featured (highly recommended) threads, members thanked the most, members getting the most complaints.
* Some areas of the forum are private and cost a small fee and special approval via a review of your posting history at ET to gain access too. Once you get access, you can find things like whom are located near you, access to top threads that are well moderated, enhanced private message and attachment capabilities et cetera.
* Top notch international economic/market event calendar and market news
The one thing Elitetrader.com consistently has is that it has a very user friendly design, most popular sponsors, sponsor ads don't feel like its always in your face when navigating ET due to ET making the message post area BIGGER than the ads. In addition, ET uses less or none existent pop up ads whereas such is still a pain in the butt at other forums. Some forums think its cute to pop up a "log-in or Sign up" window when you go to their site...it's not.
Anyways, many of the stuff I mentioned that I like and have seen elsewhere at other forums...all that stuff has been mentioned MULTIPLE times to Baron or Joe here in the feedback section the past 10 years. There's still hope ET will catch up or able to adopt such without coughing up its simple design. Yet, the fact remains that ET can only do so much with the coding and software limitations of its web design. It'll also be a pain in the butt for Baron to move ET to a software that's able to do many of the above because I believe ET is on the old vB design.
Mark