An ability for the members of the community to give a poster reputation could be very helpful in establishing people who are participating well in the message board. This could be on a per-post basis -- i.e. when someone says the post is good or helpful or whatever, they add reputation points to the author. This would be especially good if it were combined with rating answers to questions -- i.e. let the question asker rate the people who answered as well as the answers.

If you want to see how forums should work and honestly, if you want to see how things should be named as well, look at SMF. They would be pretty much my idea on how forums should work & be administered. Administration is simple and nearly brainless. Frankly, one of the most confusing things about your forums portlet is the nomenclature you use. If you'd just rename stuff to the "standard" that SMF and PHPBB use, it would be far more intutive for most of us.