From what I've seen, I don't expect the forum to implement this. If it can be handled by a user application, Admin doesn't need to spend time on it.
No, I'd bet the house this wouldn't be implemented. And I'm not disparaging those applications created by members at all, but they seem to be like 3rd party aftermarket add-ons which are necessary only because there's so little development on this forum. As far as the administrator not spending time on things like this, I'm left wondering if there's any time spent
at all improving bitcointalk in its current state.
I've got the New Forum Discussion section on ignore, so I'm not sure what's happening on that front, but with all the resources Theymos has at his disposal and all the requests for simple forum features, I don't understand why he continues to do nothing except maintain his stony silence. I'm pretty sure the members who've created the 3rd party applications are excellent coders and probably would have helped Theymos make those features an integral part of the forum instead of being things users have to implement themselves. Am I way off base here or what?
I agree with you that there might be some good coders/developers here on the forum that can help theymos in implementing these features on the forum.
However, I can think of one downside to taking help from them. In future, if any upgrade or maintenance needs to be done regarding to these features, those members might not be available at that time. On the other hand, if the new suggested features are worked upon by in house staff, future work related to these features will be easier and in control.