I am wary of the smileys. I logged on twice this morning, just came back and did'nt have to log in. I like being able to upload an avatar, and hope to get 'avatarded' with it. Who's going to be the first one to hit the Report? button? Is the Thank button similar to Facebooks' Like button?
Love the max no. of characters too...
The Smilies are basically because I got tired of the same 20 we had for 8 years, so I dug around and collected about 200 more - lol
The Thank button is kinda like an electronic 'thank you' -- it was working in a past version but I think there is a bug in the version we have -- the developers are working on it though, so hopefully in the next patch it will come back to life :)
Next to the username on a topic is a thumb-up and thumb-down icon -- those are 'user reputations' we have now -- so those are more like a "like/dislike" button -- as more members use those buttons on posts, reputations will be percentaged and displayed throughout the forums -- it's kinda neat but not much use yet --