If a new forum does come about, then would it have all the accounts transferred or will have people start all over ?
Everything will be transferred over.
I'm sorry if I come across as rude, but this forum needs to make the important changes/additions now. While you're reading this remember that this forum is pretty much the only one that represents bitcoin.
It has been over a year without avatars (ok, not too much of a setback). However, things we need like 2 factor authentication or at the very least email verification doesn't even exist. The talks of a new forum is starting to get old, we're so in the dark that 99% of users here have no clue what is going to happen and when. A new captcha service needs to be put in place to prevent those bots signing up thousands of accounts as has been seen in the past few days.
Newbie jail needs to come back. I know, theymos, it does give you more ad views but come on, it is not worth it for us (the number of annoying and worthless loan requests, the bots, the overall lower quality coming from brand new users).
Please make the changes that we require, or at least pass on (or share) this power to do so onto another, preferably capable, person.
This forum it meant for discussion about Bitcoin, why does not having a avatar affect that? 2 factor would be nice, but the new forum is on it's way. I don't think you realise how much work needs to be done on building new software & designing it. I would rather wait a few years than having a shit attempt of making the forum. I'm not 100% sure why email verification is necessary, I can't remember if it's in the new forum but, it really isn't a big deal if we have it. If we bring back newbie jail I believe that's just limiting the real posters and when the newbie jail was active it just lead to spam just so people could get out, no the spam wasn't everywhere. But, it was concentrated in the newbie & help section, which believe it or not people do ask some quality questions from time to time.
You can go look at the repo to see the progress being made, there's changes everyday. There's also been a preview over in "New forum software" which has now changed.
It's not that the bots are too much of a big deal either they get dealt with within an hour of reporting.
the new kids websites better and the way its been setup in the cloud will make it much much more resilient 
