Design work continues... most recently I've written in the stuff about subscriptions. Paypal will still be supported, and eventually I want to look into the possibility of supporting transactions through other means, maybe such as Google Checkout.
There are still a few things on my to-do list - some smaller than others. The one that I guess is amongst the most contentious is the rating system.
It's been established that the site will be getting the ability to tag a user with one or more keywords. If you think that a particular person is "all about" graphics, or neural networks, or whatever, you can tag them accordingly. Then, when you're searching for information on a particular topic, the site will be able to point you at people who are heavily involved in that topic - the idea is that they will be the 'experts in the field.' The search will also be able to do things like identifying threads or articles that have involvement from those experts (handy if you're looking for answers), versus things that do not (handy if you're looking for questions).
The tagging system won't just be limited to technical topics. If somebody's just a really nice guy, you can tag them with 'nice guy' (or just 'nice'). If they're good at explaining things, you can tag them with 'good teacher' or 'good at explaining.' If they're impatient and ungrateful, you can tag them with 'unpatient' and 'ungrateful.'
The question is, is that enough to be useful?
Remember that the site has no concept of what a tag means. It has no inherent distinction between 'idiot' and 'guru' - they're both just words. As such it's difficult for the site to 'take action' against people who are being rude and abusive; it doesn't know which tags indicate that.
Furthermore, I'm not sure how many people will be comfortable tagging somebody as an idiot. It is, perhaps, a bit too negative, a bit too damning, and it lacks eloquence - 'idiot' isn't very descriptive. The system won't prevent it for those people who /are/ comfortable with it, naturally, but I fear that it may simply not be used by people who just want to express a vague feeling of displeasure with a person.
Add to this another oft-cited issue with the existing rating system - that people too often don't know or understand what they've been rated up or down for. We've said in the past that ratings should be awarded based on a holistic consideration of a person's contribution - that you shouldn't rate somebody without looking at their profile and seeing their other posts. Maybe they're just having a bad day. After observing the system for several years, I don't think people do this - so maybe it's worth abandoning the approach.
What I'm considering is a variation on a system I've seen at some other forums - specifically I'm thinking of TCE, though I'm sure it's elsewhere as well. Simply put, on every post, there'd be a "thanks!" and "no thanks!" button. You press the former if you want to thank a user for their contribution; you press the latter if you feel the opposite. The total number of 'thanks' and 'no thanks' are weighed up and used to calculate a karma rating for the post. A user's total karma rating is then calculated as a function of the karma ratings of all their posts.
To be clear, unlike these other systems, it would still be anonymous. You would not see who has thanked/blamed somebody for a given post, only the number of people who have done so. I'm thinking as well that it would be displayed on a colour scale rather than a numeric value, so that people don't go apeshit over tiny changes in value.
What do you think?
, and 
are useful.
My thoughts on this are that the per-post icons dont make a whole lot of difference, but you can use them as emoticons. Some do, some don't.
Keeping paypal is good, thats how I pay. I personally have no need for any additional pay methods, especially when its once per year.
Making any form of change will be very resisted, im not sure its actually necessary. Everybody suggests their own personal idea of what the rating should do and you will not please everybody.
Is the tag you set visible to anybody else? if it is then this may be a mistake... e.g. when you get tagged "Gun toting maniac" or "Bleeding heart liberal pussy" because you posted in the recent Gun control thread.
Does this mean it will be a selection from an explicit list, or does it take any string?
Not really, as people show different personalities in different forums, but I for one do not want to get contacted by the last 4 people I helped with vector math or SDL because they remember me from last time.
linxor I would be using this definition of idiot if I had the option to label a person as such, however many people consider an "idiot" to be a person who does not agree with them or their political belieefs, or their "one true operating system" or whatever it means at the time. Its too broad and for that reason is unsuitable for an explicit list of tags.
a simple per-post YES/NO would suffice here, but the question remains what happens to people with an already high or low rating, how will you translate the numeric value into something meaningful in the new system? If you can pull this off without making people with 1000 <= rating <= 1100 look like fools I will be happy.