Two things that were said stick out.
t_backoff wrote:
Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat (I think I covered all 8 points of yours). Personally, I think the "reputation" should be vote up or vote down. Nothing else! If people want to expand on that, then create a plugin for it. I wan to be clear - I'm not against such a system going it, but it needs to be basic (again, just vote up and vote down). Adding all these unnecessary crap just makes the stuff more complex and steers phpBB away from it's core purpose - to create discussions.
It should be basic / simple, and the concept of up or down being the only options is a great way to do this. Personally I feel that a reputation system should be applied to users, but only accessible in posts. Something like allowing each post to have a link or button where you can vote a user up or down based on their post. Not only would this reward helpful users, it would help stop spam, non sense, and other negative items. You could maybe even implement a feature where if a user has so many down-voted posts they can't do things like use avatars, have signature, post to certain things, etc. But honestly, this is just a more complex version of the report post feature so in all honesty it may be pointless. That is just my take.
The second thing that stood out was
DavidIQ wrote:It amazes me how many people are ready to jump ship because phpBB doesn't have feature X or Y when most of what is being asked for is already available as MODs/add-ons. Sure it would be nice to include some of these features in core but including everything everyone would want in the core would make phpBB a bit bloated and we need to maintain a good balance between good core features and bloat and including everything everyone has mentioned is just not reasonable.
This is a huge selling point for phpBB. The fact that it is simple, and doesn't include a huge amount of core features. The fact that phpBB is so easy to build onto, and develop into exactly what you need is a key factor. In all honesty phpBB right now comes with exactly what it needs to. There are two things I wanted to see come with the BB by default. These were a global quick reply system that can be turned on and off in different areas, and a hyperlink with the last post title on the forum index instead of an icon. The first item has all ready been implemented, and the second is so easy to implement ourselves it's silly to request it.
This software is so underestimated. It is meant to be a bulletin board, and it does a fantastic job of this. But everyone overlooks that the phpBB core comes with all of these amazing features, and the real problem is simply tying them into your website.
DavidIQ says it as clearly as it can be said. Adding a large number of things to the core just adds bloat. We should stick to just basic features that can be used in a number of different ways. What I mean is that single features that can be used to accomplish a multitude of tasks are the important features to implement with the core. I have always felt that what makes phpBB unique is how easily it is to turn it into what you need. The lack of certain core features allows a much wider range of possibilities.
The only thing I really want to see with added to the phpBB core right now is the ability to be taken back to your previous viewed page after logging in. No matter if you are in the forum path or outside of it, and long as each page is defined in phpBB and you are using phpBB's session. With this small implementation you can use phpBB features hand in hand with your website without any effort.