That it is. However, I twigged something the other day - it isn't just Superbike, check out the online presence of other IPC mags. Everything from the knitting mags to the horsey mags uses the same shitty UBBThreads software, presumably all implemented on one central server somewhere, and centrally administered (for quite small values of administered, obviously). So, if the denizens of "Braying hoorays on future glue sticks Monthly" or "Joy of Knitting Weekly" know no better and are quite happy with what they have, our minority seething discontent is rather irrelevant. Also, the pervasive nature of UBBThreads and the way it has been integrated into the various different magazine webshites would make the project to roll something better out and migrate all the data across to it a bit more of a challenge (a complwete bastard actually) and an expensive, high-risk one at that.

SO in other words, IPC's Web Knobbers fucked up when they chose a forum tool, and now they (and we) are realistically stuck with it for as long as it doesn't seriously shit itself and start costing money to keep running...