I have been using this cms for a couple years now but the forum seems to be the biggest complaint right now on one of my sites.  I made a list of what is no my list of things to fix myself if they dont get fixed on their own.   One reason I dont like to edit a mod and like to see it stay stock is so it can update without having to redo the work again.  From my past experiences with PHP and PHP Forums along with php developer sites is that there is usually a lot of code being slung around as we try to hack things together.  I did switch most all my platforms to the .NET however I sure miss using PHP but I really want to get familiar with C# and ASP.NET now.  With that said there are a few things keeping DNN as being a sweet CMS system that is open source and that is its forums.  Sure you can go out and buy and spend thousands however I cant afford that for all my little web projects I make $0 from that is why I am here.  I believe this should be a priority list from top to bottom of what I strongly feel needs to get delt with and the community of developers here should step up and fix this the rest of the way so we can move on to making nicer looking websites and better features than standard ones.

1. One is the internal messaging system working with forum private messaging.  The internal message system needs a way users can select from members list by viewing "display names" or "usernames" (depending on what is set in module settings?).  Typing in guessed usernames is a pain when the forum only displays usernames.  I like the idea of protecting the username and use display name however the only way to get a message is for the users to know the username.  There needs to be a way to lookup by display name.  Display name may need an option to be unique so that it cant be used more than once like username when it gets set.  Also a link in the forum to private message is a must!
2. User Profiles need to be able to allow users to update added feilds so the ones I add can be viewed edited and displayed in the Users Profile Template.  When I click on someones profile link now in the forum it just forwards me to my own profile.  Not sure where the setting is to change it so it will work like the forum on the dotnetnuke website however I must be missing something there it would be nice to be able to set this from module settings as well.
3. Managing avatars needs to be easier such as viewing a collection of avatars that may be in the users folder or a user folder in the SystemAvatars so they can manage a number of avatars.
4. Not as important but a limited WYSIWYG editor for the signature would be nice but works ok as is.
5. More Themes, 2-3 Themes would be nice to have to choose from that work with 6.0. 

Food for thought if I can help I will where I can as I will try to figure some of this stuff out on my own like most everyone else has had to do or come up with other solutions.  I like the idea of fixing the modules that already exists.  I am about to dive deep into developing some mods for DNN here soon and I am sure if its ok to grab code from other modules released here to fix issues with mods since most all of this has already been done just need to add it to these modules.  Need hack this thing together the rest of the way. 

Thank you for all the contributions made and I look forward to future ones.

wow missed that DNN bought this... I was rooting you on hoping to see this forum module become more social freindly with the core and messaging system.

DNN still has a problem with messaging as there is no way to lookup members and if you list only display name... thats a big problem.

I will try this lite application, 3 forums should be enough for one install dont know why there is a limit... and 1 group is kind of wierd for a open source forum. I guess phpBB will rule the open source forum community and possibly win me back as I am more fluent with php although I have really been working hard on .NET lately. This is just for some hobby projects mainly however I do have some important business websites I develop as well. I just got to where I feel good skinning DNN now its app modules.

I guess if Active Modules is taking over for the DNN Forum this one will be mothballed soon?

Is there a script for moving from this forum to active forums or is it going t be a clean install. I will play with it today I suppose. Thanks for the update Chris and thank you for making this forum worthy of using too bad it may no longer be.

My question is I guess is why is the messaging system still so weak of an app in DNN. Is there another messaging system in Active Forums? well I suppose I will find out thanks again Chris, sorta bummed right now :(