I have to agree with goldenepp. I'd like to see a little more robust tools in the game database. Instead of only displaying million sellers in the worldwide software area, for example, I would like to be able to pull down a list of every title on a single platform and have it be sorted from best selling to worst. I recognize that I can get that info from the charts themselves, but it's not convenient to do so.

 Nope, i would love it that way.

 ²

Advertise your myspace through the home page damn it, then I can build a community off of that and in the long it will reflect on this sites traffic :)

ioi I have a number of design ideas for you, just going to share them here and I hope folks will have a chance to comment on which ones they like and which ones they don't like.

1) "NEW!" - Some way of marking a thread so that it is readily apparent that it has a new post since the last time you have checked the thread.
2) "Goto Post" - A link on the forum level listing next to each thread that you have posted in that opens the page and takes you to your most recent post in that thread.
3) Charts "View"-Window - The ability to set a time frame for hardware charts would be simply amazing...really no other way to say it. Just to be clear this would be specified as a date range for non-aligned graphs and a week range for aligned graphs.
4) Ignore List - I think this could help cut down on a lot of problems on these forums. I know there are some folks I would put on ignore and it would be nice =)
5) Predictions - New feature entitled "Predict THIS!".
Step 1) Mod adds new prediction (ie "What will be the final LTD of Wii sales on Jan 1 2008?", along with this he sets a cut-off date for making the prediction and a "Lock-In" period for the prediction.
Step 2) People go into their profile and can choose to enter into as many of these predictions as they want. Any prediction made is publicly viewable in the profile, and once the result of a prediction comes in the prediction and the result will be posted at the bottom of the signature of that user until the "Lock-In" period is over.

Note) You can add in automatic features for "Ban Bets" here if you want also...

6) 5 second post delay to cut down on double posts
7) Favorite threads List for users in their profile, this one could probably be done with bookmarks but I figured since you really only have to store a single number for each thread this wouldn't be a bad one to implement to help some of the users who aren't great at navigating the site.
8) Thread Ban - I really think the idea of a thread ban could be very successful. Basically by allowing mods to stop people before they get going without forcing them to stop posting altogether would be a useful addition to the mod arsenal. Particularly for allowing the mods to stop an ongoing problem while they consult another mod for possible further action instead of allowing it to continue while talking to stof, ben, you, etc...
9) Reviews Section - I already mentioned this one to you and I still like the idea of a review section, especially if you set up the forum in an alphabetized setup making it easy to find games and allow a special search feature just for reviews. If you threw in a specialized topic starter interface to allow for setting sub-scores and final scores you could do some interesting things at the forum level, and it would provide a sortable field for review scores. Possibly require a certain number of posts for users to utilize this also. And have some strict rules for abusing it.
10) Topic Starter Title Edits - PLEASE!!!!!
11) User specified posts per page - Allowing the user to set how many posts per page in their profile would be nice for some of the folks who maybe have more or less bandwidth/memory than normal. PS - I would still love a scaling width layout for the site...but I realize I am in the minority with my monitor of Doom =)
12) OH, and "Thread Start Ban" - A certain someone is notorious for pointless threads. Perhaps one of these bans would help give them incentive to lay off of the frivolous topics a bit. I don't think just one or two random threads warrants action but constant pointless threads is ...well annoying.
13) E-mail updates - Allow users to get email updates, you can use this to let folks know when all the results are in for a given week and when you have big anouncements to make. This would not be as big of a feature for regulars as it would be for folks who visit occasionally and it might get people to sign up for an account and/or visit the site a bit more.
14) Donating Member - For folks who donate cash to the site you should give them either a special title denoting their contribution or perhaps an avatar? Something to point out and highlight the folks who are helping out.
15) Image Extraction - This one might be a bit harder but the basic idea is that you would allow people who are looking at a graph to download an image of that graph (or have it saved to the site itself) so they can link that graph in a thread rather than having 100 people come and look at the same graph over and over again.

Ok well thats a good start for now, and sorry if I repeated anything that has already been mentioned. I am just trying to toss out some ideas and while I think they would all be good features I don't expect them to pop up over night ....but I'll give you week ;) Seriously though, I understand that you have a lot of stuff going on right now and you still have to keep up with your real life so I don't want to come across like I expect you to spend your life updating the site. These are just some ideas for you to pick over and implement the ones you think would help the site the most.

Thanks for the feedback Just_Ben, glad to hear that my early morning ramblings sound good even after the fact, I just hope ioi gets a chance to look at those.

Oh btw, are you sure we have #1? Currently orange topics have had posts added in the last 24 hours and blue topics haven't, but is there a way to quickly tell if there has been a new post in a thread since you last checked that thread?

No objections here, I agree the current listing is cumbersome.

I also like most of Sqrl's suggestions, especially "go to your last post" or "go to first unread post".  Probably just the latter would suffice, and it could be done for any thread even if you haven't posted in it, if it knows when you last visited.  That would be a lot of timestamps to maintain, though, and "go to your last post" would be almost as good and easier to implement.

Someone had an idea to change the date range on the charts.  I think the ability to change all the extents (that is, the max and min on both axes) would be most excellent.  It's rather difficult to, for example, compare early PS2 sales with early Wii sales because the graph extents are so big.  It would be awesome to be able to "zoom in" on a section of the graph.  Also, bringing back the raw numbers below the graphs would also be awesome!

Few things, timestamps aren't really necessary for tracking last post and it can be a pain to do date comparisons etc...just the post # would suffice (iirc in SQL a timestamp is 4 bytes and smallint is 2 bytes), especially since the post # is the unique identifier for a post. Then you can optimize further by having the database remove this data for any thread that has no new posts in a week/month/etc.... And if you really want you can add some coding for revived threads so that by default a thread being "revived" (ie posted in past whatever period you set) will automatically take you to the revival post and set your new "last viewed post" to the most recent post on the thread.

Also I would add that idea #1 and #2 can be combined, make an icon that denotes "new posts in this thread" and have clicking on that icon take you to the first undread post.

BTW - I noticed I misspoke on #2 but Entroper and Just_Ben both got the idea on their own from that anyways. My intention was "first unread" but my brain produced something else, so thanks for clarifying that as I would have likely missed it.

@ioi, I have a flare for user interface design and I can take blunt critisism well. So, please feel free to ask for some ideas while you develope this stuff as I thoroughly enjoy designing UIs and am glad to assist where I can. Plus I have php experience so I have a decent idea of the design challenges you are working with.