In Reply To:
Suggestions like "use new forum software" are not really practical nor helpful; porting the forum over would be an enormous task, and Gossamer also is nice in that it has great support for us. Sorry, that is one thing that ain't a gonna happen. What specific features of vBulletin do you want? Tell me what it is you want, and that is much more useful...
But yes, I will also see about getting the search to default by date, since I think that is more useful as well...
Nothing super-critical, but there are some cool features. The nicest I've seen is a live chat room. Avatars, profile pics, photo album hosting, better search capability, more detailed user profile capability, "world map" capability (people enter their location on a map so you can see who's where), I'm sure there's more but those are the bells and whistles that stand out to me. Most of the forums (fora?) that I see that use vBulletin have a "supporting member" feature where you can opt to donate something like $5/month in support of the forum to help defray costs. In return you get a larger private message mailbox or photo storage capability, and stuff like that. I'd support something like that here.
Edit- I forgot about the ability to see who's online at any time, events calendar (no, I don't work for vBulletin I just really like their SW)