Thanks Andy, and I understand the rationale. What would really help I think is simply improving the forum engine, which would make the user experience more enjoyable.
A couple of things that bugs me is the poor searching functionality on it and I would love to get a notification if a new post occurs on a thread that I have contributed to, without having to check on the site. I find the TechRadar Forum (and their whole site in general) is a good example of a well-designed forum, as well as news, reviews and provides RSS feeds.