I added in smiley faces wasn't because I was trying to be "cheery" or trying to sound "patronizing," it was because I was trying to sound nice and frinedly, but unfortunately, it had the opposite effect.

I see. The problem is that it came across as a friendly smile, or alternatively, the "help desk smile" (you know, the one the employer tells you you have to give everyone), or worst, the Walmart greeter smile minus some of the creepiness. Combine this with very corporate-type responses or posts in threads, which makes for a very impersonal response, esp. when it sounds like one of those automated email responses you tend to get when you contact a large company about something. It came across as disingenuous at best, patronizing at worst, because, well-- people don't naturally smile when they open the door to a wall of high velocity flames or when the place is crumbling all around them.

I take blame for only now bringing the "it feels impersonal" point. With all the yapping and being a broken record that I've done since last summer, you'd think that I would have thought about that while posting just once.

I'm still doing my best to try and fix this community, but it will take time, trust and some serious re-building. But, since I KNOW you guys love this community - as do I - so I'm going to do my best to address your concerns.

The problem is, that your best may be futile, as many of the complaints are in regards to things that either TPtB have the final say in, or something that is entirely up to them. And I apologize if my statement in this regards in the previous post came off as hostile. It was more out of bitterness, though admittedly there was SOME hostility there (but not towards you or the other forum admins)

So, firstly, I hear the forums aren't easy to use. Can someone please provide me with an example so I can address this?

Mostly due to the markdown language-- I can never remember which punctuation does what, and clicking the tabs often inserts a space in between the punctuation mark and either the beginning or ending of the text, so that you have to go back and edit out the space. Then there are those of us who like to use those floor hashes and asterisks, but unfortunately we can't, so it makes bullet points difficult to make. This is one of those examples of things that are completely out of your control-- unless you and the other admins can somehow convince TPtB that Markdown is a really crappy language.

Also, what about the gallery? What are the issues with that?

I can't speak about any other issues, but the most common problem is that the search function on the gallery, just like the MP and freestuff searches, sucks. I'm not going to bother giving you examples since other people have done it within the past few months, and I'm too lazy right now.