Yes, options are nice to have. Uploading files directly would be easier on the end user, but would also require development time and potentially down the road could also lead to added costs. I think there are better things that the Administration could spend their time on, but I'm certain that there are developers who would love to take on this task and possibly even figure out how to use IPFS so that bitcointalk doesn't have to handle all the responsibility. I guess my question is, would you be willing to donate funds to help the development of these options, or is it just a nice thing to talk about? How many weeks of your signature campaign money would you donate to help make this happen? I'm guessing none, but what do I know? Personally, I'd rather see the administration spend time fixing the politically manipulated disaster that the trust network has turned into.
You'd be surprised, all of this can be handled via a plugin. SMF has lots of third-party ones (trusted of course) and newer SMF versions have incorporated this.
Storage-wise, not really an issue. There are cloud solutions, NAS. Costs for them have decreased over the years. No need to rework the whole forum for that.
Also am pretty sure the forum isn't lacking in funds from the donations for the memberships and advertising fees over the years.
