Is this the place to request a late addition to 4.6? Only half joking, but thinking granular control of what folks can post in topics and comments might come in handy. I for one am not a fan all of the street furniture that's appeared in this 'community' over the past couple of months, but appreciate of course, that for every one like me, there's probably several who think the complete opposite. With this in mind, catering for both sides of the divide makes sense to me, allowing administrators to control what can be posted beyond the current globally allowed file types.
I do believe @Nathan Explosion has a plugin that achieves some of this (which I hope to purchase in the near future), but it doesn't as far as I know have a 60+ OAP switch allowing oldies like me to be able to browse forums just like we used to 20/30 years ago. On a more serious note, such functionality, both in the hands of the administrator and end users would allow us to control what we see at the individual forum level, beyond being able to hide signatures. Of course hiding or preventing the use of animations and the like (I own a VFX business, so I'm not totally averse) would of course mean that many comments would, for many of us, go unread. Which at the moment some might say isn't a bad thing, plus of course, folks suspecting they aren't being 'read' by the topic's entire audience might well instead resort to that old favourite - letters and words. In saying that, perhaps the creators of Giphy and the like have missed a trick. Shouldn't they have designed (or have they already?) their witty delivery mechanism to include a native alt attribute so that post/comment authors could include real words for those blocking the graphical part of the content. Or, in lieu of this, perhaps Invision could allow our humorously minded friends the option of adding an alt attribute to images of all types (without needing to add a CKEditor image plugin), so that we can see what they meant, even if we decide to block what they intended.
To the principle reason for commenting. I think Invision Community should be both proud and thankful that so many of its clients are still around after so many years. For example, selecting solely from this topic, @The Old Man and @Chris Anderson have both (if I've interpreted their joined date correctly) been here for 17+ years and @Kjell Iver Johansen, for 9+ years, whilst evidently, also caring very much about the platform. As for me, I'm relatively new here, but older than most it seems, but I share with those mentioned a deep desire to go about my business in the most efficient way possible, if only because at my time of life (61) time isn't an endless resource and I'd rather spend it as frugally as possible.
Finally from me tonight, I do hope the community can pull together here. I've made representations to @Matt about this just recently. I am very pleased to see that an investment has been made in hiring a (semi?) dedicated resource in @Jordan Invision, but I would ask that more care is taken to involve the community as a whole. Otherwise as others have outlined, some of us might find it difficult to contribute. Now although me holding my tongue might suit some of you, I do feel the community will suffer disproportionately if some of the older, more experienced regulars here, stop contributing in the ways that they have done.
Looking forward to 4.6 and beyond. Thanks for a great platform.
