Robert Angle

I hope you consider it in the future, even as an additional paid add-on. 

I initially used IPB around 2010, then again about 5 years ago, more for fun. However, I continued to follow the evolution of IPS and today, I am starting a serious and monetized project with a community.
Currently, in rebuilding a site with IPS, I am noticing significant progress from the team. The introduction of a gamification system, improved ergonomics, push notifications, and the recruitment of Ehren are major advances to stay at the forefront of UI and UX design, as well as for PWA integration.
In the past, with IPB 4, we had grievances regarding the design, mobile navigation, and the absence of a dedicated app. These issues are now resolved, eliminating any hesitation to stay on this platform rather than looking for another to manage a community.
Regarding the marketplace, I remain optimistic, convinced that even without development expertise, the decisions made by IPS aim to improve and accelerate the product's evolution, while reducing bugs.
This contrasts with WordPress and its vast user base, where major changes are risky and can hinder development due to the many interferences between applications and updates.
Despite debates on the number of user applications available on IPS, the possibility to install applications remains, ensuring their availability for a few more years since they have not been completely removed.
There are aspects that we must accept and adapt to.
Apart from the absence of an Elementor-type editor, available on WordPress, I do not perceive a significant gap in IPS's current offering. This feature, although not urgent, could be added to enrich content management without impacting the ability to maintain a community.
I believe we must stop seeing IPS solely in terms of forum installation, but more so today in terms of member and group management, as well as interaction between them. So even if forum participation may decrease, there are still many possibilities to use that can facilitate support, interaction, and individual tracking within the community.
That's why I hope the upcoming products will allow for better online meetings directly on the site, live quizzes, coaching, personalized assistance, interaction within clubs, etc.
Unfortunately, and maybe I'm wrong, IPS is not used and known to the extent that it should be despite being a very stable product. Many turn towards WordPress filled with plugins from different builders (thus bugs), and to try to build a community, which IPS already does in its core with group and member management and is surely less expensive when adding an app for gamification, another for the community, etc.

There is already the BULK_MAILS_PER_CYCLE constant to solve issues with hosts that have trouble with many emails at once. 
Equally, if not more important, is how many emails are sent in a given timeframe. It’s normal for hosts and email services to have some kind of limit in that regard, but with the way IPS sends out bulk mail, it unpredictable when these limits are being hit and there is no way around this problem when the limits are hit. 
I suggest a solution like a MAX_MAIL_CYCLES_PER_TASK constant or setting to limit the amount of cycles run each time a cron is being fired. So, for example, I could set 1 run of 100 emails with the cron running every minute resulting in 1000 mails in 10 minutes. 
I understand that IPS isn’t all that focussed on features that would only help self-hosted customers, but it seems like an easy implementation which could help a lot of users. It’s actually the behaviour that people are already expecting. 

I would need an example of that member. If they are still able to react, I suspect they are not actually banned, as they would only be able to see the ban message

I recall @SJ77 experiencing a similar issue....
 

Indeed. Unfortunately we could not replicate it there either

Whether someone is paid or not, they are still representing your “company” so I would still suggest vetting that individual and formalizing the relationship to a degree. If little things like this are making you think twice on someone, it’s likely for the better you don’t make them a moderator. Or vice versa, if you as an admin are having second thoughts relinquishing control over small things like this, are you ready for/need staff or can you get by with the bare minimum? There are a lot more critical details staff will need access to as you grow so plan how that gets attributed/promoted too.
I don’t think many people know this but many of the IC staff became staff through having communities of our own. So I don’t mean to say these things from a “I know better” place but we do have real world experience, yet are happy to be proven wrong or if there are other scenarios.
I typically don’t have a “contract” for my community staff but a do/don’t list, minimum tenure before becoming staff, quick questionnaire wouldn’t be unheard of, training steps starting them out, etc… all a good time for you to vet them further or for them to opt out 😉 .

To play devil's advocate here: Why make them a mod if you do not trust them to not do something like this though? Especially, something small like editing a profile of another staff member on the front-end. If you can't trust them not to do this, you can't trust them not to do something on moderating a topic.

Make it a Staff policy, and then fire them if they do 😄

Make it a Staff policy, and then fire them if they do 😄

Check over their group ACP restriction if they have this 4 checked on :
 
Since they are considered as being "admins", they need the permission to edit admin accounts for the profile picture + other informations.

Could you please provide an example user who cannot and we can take a look?

That's what it seemed like.
I guess allowing members to specify future Publish Date would encourage them to post more with more freedom, like posting future news, etc. Suppose there is a new movie release on a future date, they could post a new topic with the future date inviting reviews and discussions from other members and when the date/time arrives, the topic would become visible. It would let them set up future topics and forget without having to post exactly when the topic is needed at which time they may not be available to post.
For articles, they could line up to post articles in future leisurely when they have ideas instead of being able to post only when needed and there is no way to defer its publish date. It gives them more freedom and encourages to post more. Not having access to Publish Date/Time is too restrictive as members may not be available to post when needed.
These are similar to posting blog entries in future or allowing members to comment on a topic without registering to encourage more registrations. All these would still go through usual moderations. Most members would be too happy to use the Publish Date/Time to their advantage and freedom if they are given an easy way to see/filter their scheduled content to make any edits and such.
And with config settings to control publish date, the default behavior could be retained with ability to grant access to these fields to members and other groups.
These changes would bring consistency across various modules and expected behaviors.

If you just want to award "badges" that aren't connected to secondary groups, then create a custom profile field that only Staff can edit, and set that field to display with content submissions.

Sometimes, new members mistakenly comment on an article when really their question is completely unrelated and belongs in a forum instead. I wish there was a way to move their comment to a forum. 

Not sure what you mean by "never got to Intents" was that meant to read as Invision? If it never made it's way back to your community, it could be your firewall blocked Stripe's webhook request or the webhook is invalid. The log should be in Stripe if that's the case.
Glad to hear you were able to resolve that!
Unfortunately, the only possibilities are:
The user was deleted after the email was sent. The user changed their email/display name after email was sent. A backup was restored after email was sent which the user does not exist.

the mystery has been solved... as suspected by evidence it was never there, haha. The user posted on another forum in reply to the same user. 🤪
Does not help explain the new user getting a email when the member record was not actually in the system thou.. but im going to overlook that unless I get another. 
Other than that new spin up is working well. We did have a member try to process payment 2x (stripe) for an order, Just went to spinning gif and stuck, it it did hit Stripe API log for Payment Methods but never got to Intents. Nothing in Invision. Hoping it's his connection, see when he tries later. 🤷‍♂️
thanks.. 

There is no specific database-setting for that. You can only turn commenting on or off, set group permissions who can comment and you can decide if all comments are moderated or not. There is no exception to have just guest-posts moderated for a specific database. 
For guest-specific settings, global posting settings would apply (e.g. Post before Register settings). 

Youre overthinking it there...
EVERY field in a Pages database has a "topic format" field - make use of it:

The forum copy of an article should be able to be an excerpt, truncated, with a URL to the full article, imo. 

Yeah, I think we can stick in a bug report for this. It does make a pretty big loophole for spammers and bad actors.

This is correct at the present time. If a post is already approved, and the user has the ability to edit, they would indeed be able to edit that without moderation

Disable Post Before Registering. Permit guests to reply in the forum. Make sure replies are moderated in the forum.
The guest will see:

 
When approved:

Actually it's not a pity seeing as we have that already and are making it better.

And I am looking forward to getting my hands on it 🙂