I'm against any mandatory payment ideas for several reasons, the most obvious being that there are additional (mainly personal) reasons why people would rather not give out their money to other people, myself included, largely due to the fact that it might make other people in their families and/or care feel uncomfortable, especially if they are not as experienced with even watching others do it (let alone actually doing it themselves), at least enough to understand what it's like. So really, if it is infact an idea for actually requiring payment, then I'm strictly against that idea.

I also don't know about the quiz either - I would only implement it if spammers and bots were coming in on a massive scale.

WinPC, have you understood anything on the post?
It said "Mandatory payment for VIP", not "Mandatory payment to join".

Did you read his post?

(my emphasis)

ie. he doesn't want people to have to pay in order to get into the VIP group.

Just remembered: a vBulletin-like double post mod (if it exists for phpBB; been in vBulletin at least since 2008). If a user double posts, this new message appends to the previous one, but unlike just editing the post, this also bumps the topic. Very useful, and done automatically.

I believe the wiki needs to have it's own set of moderators seperate from the moderators on the forum...it could create a new moderator group but it could help maintain the wiki. I would really love to see the Wiki evolve into something great but many changes need to be revised and without many people using it or moderating it; it won't keep going. We also need to advertise the wiki on the website as well. The amount of content going on the wiki is slowly diminishing.

EDIT: A tutorial on how to add pictures and to place them properly would also be a good help too.

After a lot of thought I second this idea.

After adding and editing pages on the Wiki all day yesterday, I really feel like the only one on there. I don't want just things I know about on the wiki. I want everyone else to share their information and research on the wiki. That's what it's there for.

You're hardly the only one contributing to the Wiki... I, dans34, linuxlove and others contributed a lot too.

I know you guys do, but apart from us "regulars" we need more people.

That I agree on. We need more contributions to expand and edit the wiki the way it was suppose to be...

The BetaArchive wiki should be a more indepth version of the software and operating system sections of wikipedia.

Oh, and I think we need newer mods that are around more often...a few of them haven't posted for a long time or don't go on very often, like Vista Ultimate R2, but I believe we need more that come from different parts of the globe. Most of them live in England, but I feel we could help the BetaArchive community if we have a few more moderators from different areas.

I've noticed the same thing about Vista Ultimate R2. What's going on, and where is he at the moment? Does anyone still have any contact with him?

I'll suggest (like many others did) the following:

A sign-up quiz

Maybe some sorts of betas,general OS
or at least general computer questions

A VIP section redesign

Well...Yeah...I know it's already in the works,
but still, I think it would be nice to see

Working on the Wiki/Gallery

and rewarding users who do
contribute on the wiki/gallery, like instead of 10 posts to access Advanced Membership, make 5 good Wiki articles or provide 50 screenshots....or something like that

Increasing the required post count

for Advanced Membership,
around 25 would be fine, and checking those posts thoroughly so they are indeed contributive/helpful.

I don't think a like/thanks or a rep function would be nice. Because instead of post count, some will start bragging about their rep/thanks count (see MDL and SPUF).

What will happen to the people that were VIP before the VIP re-design?

I think andy or mrpijey said they would be moved into a "Supporting members" group and individually selected or invited to a different VIP system. Based on things other than pure post count.

People who have more than 750 posts can be "Veteran Members", also, maybe a Donator group can exist

I don't like the idea of creating more user groups. It gets confusing when there's like 10 different groups, out of which 5 are indentical and serve no actual purpose...

Yeah, it gets complicated, and then no one knows which group are they in...
E.g.
VIP
FTP
Basic
Advanced...
People will go crazy with so many user groups..

There should be:

Basic
Advanced
VIP
_
Mod
Admin
Wiki Mod

Those are the groups I feel there should be.

I have some ideas regarding the wiki, but maybe it goes a bit to far or is to hard to do.

For example you can have a Windows 8 section with a list of all builds (like it is now) in the wiki.
You can sort on build numbers or the time they leaked. Every build has of course some screenshots and new features added/removed according to the previous known build. Also the source of the leak can be mentioned.
So this is much like it already is.
For builds that are on the ftp maybe a direct ftp link can be added. I don't know if such a think exists, but I mean when you click the link your default ftp program opens and downloads it, similar to opening a magnet link.

Then maybe there can be a separate "builds section" in the forum. Every build in the wiki has it's own thread there to discuss things that have specifically to do with that build (or a range of builds). Before a user can post in such a build thread he must have read that builds wiki page and have checked a checkbox saying

For example if I wanted to post in the Windows 8 8400 thread I have to read the 8400 wiki page and have a know about what the biggest things in Windows 8 development where.

Of course these threads should be kept clean. Nothing like "hi, I found a way to bring the start menu back" belongs in the 8400 thread as that's not about bugs/features in that build.

If a user contributes to the wiki then on his profile you can see exactly what words and sentences on which page he has added/changed and maybe this can also add to the +/karma system. Maybe separate from the forum karma system.

I'm conflicted about this one. Groups are denoted by color. So what if you're a Moderator on the forums and a Moderator on the Wiki? What color would that be? Do you use a color for being both? If so, that's seven colors, which gets confusing.

Wiki mods would probably only be shown as "Moderator" on the wiki, rather than on the forums, and a Moderator on the forums would just be a regular editor on the Wiki (unless theyre also a mod on the wiki).

I think Giantsteen meant that Wiki mods would only have the mod status on the Wiki; on the forum they would be regular users (e.g. Advanced or VIP). So the conclusion is that the Wiki mods group would be only on the Wiki. So it's 5 groups on the forum according to his suggestion... That's how I understood it.

Yes, and I was thinking that the wiki mods can be denoted with their own color on the forum(even though it may not serve a purpose on the forum) so they can be distinguished.

That would be quite pointless.