Firstly Phuong, as mentioned below - I didn't move the thread, I dont believe I have that authority across the forums, I am only the moderator in the Themes forum.
I believe, although could be corrected that the forum posts you mention on the frontpage of moodle.org are RSS feeds, which is already possible and which I have built into other themes for schools in the past.
From your own comment - Tags are the second most important feature for SEO after content. I don't doubt tags are a good idea, but as I said, they are not the 'cure-all' for search engine optimisation. And getting people to bother using them can also be problematic on forums - its a different use case to tagging a blog post, although may be appropriate to longer forum posts. I would say maybe a tag cloud for a whole discussion rather than for individual posts - but then if the title is meaningful I can usually find what I'm looking for already. moodle.org forum posts seem to have no difficulty showing up in google searches without tags.
If they are not subscribed and in fact are guests and therefore anonymous, how would you anticipate Moodle identifying whether they have read the posts anyway? It might be able to identify the posts read in a single session, but if they left and came back, or cleared browser history it would show those users that they have never read any of the posts again.
Attachment files - seeing who downloaded them directly: I'm sure a button to a report that extracts that info from the logs could be coded into theme if it was required, but yes, if there is a requirement for it, could probably be added as a feature into forums itself, if you request it through the tracker, particularly if you are then able to make some suggestions as to coding it (or find a developer who can). The information, as you point out, should all be there in the logs, a quick link button to extract it easily is probably what is needed. As I said I, personally, would not want a list of downloaders directly with every attachment, on courses with a few hundred users, that would be unworkable. I also wouldn't find it very useful - I would prefer to look at the total engagement with the course as a whole (via the logs and reports) and then potentially drill down from there to specific resources, rather than have lists by each attachment or resource, but that would just be my workflow.
I didn't say our students dont have social medai, I said I have an issue
with 'forcing' students to use those accounts for their education
provision and that many (not all, not even most, but a significant
number) of our students prefer to keep their social lives and their
education separate.
Xenforo - a typo, but doesn't change the fact I've never heard of it before. I had read the link you provided the first time and found nothing there to alter my comment that I know nothing about it so wasn't able to comment on it. Perhaps showing my ignorance, but then I never claim to know every piece of software out there on the web. I am surprised though that as you state its such a huge piece of software that the only mention of it I can find in Moodle forums (which are often full of discussions about integrations with things like Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla) is this thread.
Themes, just like the rest of Moodle are open source, and if one gets abandoned that you are using, you are free to maintain it or find another maintainer - big themes such as Essential/Elegance have found alternative community maintainers, and while some of my older themes (as an example) are not being maintained on the community for current moodle releases, I am aware of my old krystle and flexi_ii themes being in use on sites running 2.9 and will be happy to support those users on a 1-1 basis if and when they upgrade next time. Also those of us in the community do our best to continue to support themes from the community plugins database for as long as it is practical to do so - I know there are still people using formal white and other older themes on Moodle 2.9 and 3.0 (That situation does change if you have opted for a commercial theme). Even software like Windows has an end of life period and things that run on one version of Windows may not run on a future one when you upgrade - and upgrading itself is always a choice if it breaks too many of your plugins. I know many sites conitnued to use 1.9 for a long time rather than lose some of their customisations when upgrading to Moodle2. Fortunately the shift to Moodle3 is not that severe.
'If you feel my suggestion unnecessary, you
may ignore them.' - It is not my intention to ignore them, or to denegrate them, but to engage with you and your suggestions. If we don't discuss suggestions like yours then it becomes impossible to get community engagement on what is the best way forward. If my ideas contrast with yours, that is not an indication that I believe yours are wrong, or that mine are better than yours in ANY way! simply that they are different and are there for discussion and determining best ways forward. That may be that the discussions lead to changes in core features, or it may be that someone takes your ideas and mine and pushes them in a third direction with a plugin of some kind.
'I on behalf of moodlers using moodle in schools where
E-learning isn’t compulsory say and suggest what we want and wish in future
moodle' - This is perhaps the only statement you make that I do actually have a major issue with. E-Learning is not compulsory in any of the institutions I have worked with, although it may be in a few individual courses. However, I would have to say, you do not speak on behalf of me and my wishes for the future of Moodle. I am fine with discussing all the points you make, whether I agree with them or not in the common desire to make Moodle better, except for the sweeping general statement that you speak on behalf of all moodlers in schools where e-learning isn't compulsory. By all means make your points on your own behalf, imply or even state that you believe others in your position would likely share some of your views, but to state that you speak on their behalf in a community the size of Moodle, while actually stating, incorrectly, that you believe Moodle's core purpose is in schools and institutions where e-learning is compulsory, is somewhat undermining your own arguments in my opinion.
Richard
