First of all, some very good points. I'll address what I can, but I'll need others' help.

With regards to the NSFW, Eric and Xianti are working on the forum mod to hide avatars. We lost it during the last upgrade and, unfortunately, every time we perform an upgrade all our mods have to be re-applied. And sometimes they don't go back in as smoothly. This is being worked on - not that you're complaining about this yourself, but as you pointed out, others are.

I don't know how to help noobs follow directions. I think many read our stickies or guidelines, but many do not. Any suggestions? A FAQ for each forum may be helpful, so then if a thread comes up that's been answered in our FAQ, anyone could just post a link back up to the FAQ, which would effectively shut that thread down and show others where to go.

I do still play poker, although not as much as I used to. Most of my free time is spent working on this site rather than actually playing. But I still play, I still do well when I do, and I plan on playing in the WSOP next year. Xianti has not given up on the forums - he basically took a 3 month vacation which I talked to him about. He's moved and was busy, but has told me he is back on track and totally dedicated to FTR. We'll see if he keeps his word, and if he doesn't, we'll fire him and bring on another forum admin. Eric has never been big on posts - he's our techie - so yeah that's not surprising. Eric has been working on setting up interviews with the pro's that we're interested in.

Xianti is running the forums, so if there are mod's not doing their job, Xianti needs to be aware of it. I believe he's getting on top of things now, but he can always be PM'd.

I agree that the FTR forums was a cool, friendly place to be. I was really proud of that. I was shocked and disappointed when I received an email saying how rude the guys were here and that this person never want to come back to FTR. I hope the regulars and admins can remember where we came from, and how we established ourselves. Maintain the standards that we prided ourselves on. People left 2+2 and came here. I was also shocked at a feud going on between two of our long time members that I just learned about. Where's the fuckin FTR brotherhood?

We are suffering from growing pains. Everyone needs to help. I'm open to suggestions. Maybe we can start with each Mod putting together a FAQ for his section. I think this is a good idea for the forums that don't already have FAQ's.