Answer to your first question is found in the last post of the thread. Tom redirecting comments, complaints, problems etc to the main thread:

As far as Secret Santa, I sticked that for the short term so that it would remain visible. I will unsticky it later next week once the PMs go out on who everyone's secret Santa is that choose to participate.

As far as the issues with this new forum software - yes they are many and wide ranging. Please let it be known that none of the Admins or Moderators here on BikeForums had any real part in the decision to move forward with the upgrade. We have however been working very hard to get the problems identified so that the development team can get them fixed. I am just as frustrated as any of you about the issues we have had since the upgrade. I honestly can not think of a single positive that has come out of it thus far, and only hope that in the near future things will get ironed out enough so that we can stop complaining about the software and get back to talking about bikes.

If any member chooses to take a "break" from the forum due to these issues, please PM me with contact information if you wish to be notified when I deem the forum stable enough to return. I'm here for the long haul, though I will admit I have been putting in extra time improving my own cycling website (and forum) in the last several weeks.