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^
I was involved for long enough to know I no longer wanted to be...

Quick question on something I just noticed - why have a big green 'PM' button at the bottom of each post if using that link writes a PM to 'none' instead of the person who made the post? I just got caught by that a few moments ago. Clicking on a name link and using the PM button in that menu does work, the out-front button however doesn't link back to the user.

Yep, it's a known bug with apparently no chance of being fixed.
Your discovery that using the PM button obtained through the profile works as expected is the workaround.

but it's such a simple fix -- changing the query string parameter that's being used from "user_name" to "username" does the trick.

True - but the last development occurring with this site was a transfer over to a (then) newer version of pbpBB in late 2014 (and even that was screamingly, desperately, overdue).
Such bugs as there were became "fixed" by the update; unfortunately new ones were inherited in the process.

Another question that raises, and it's two-pronged:

1) Do we have third-party contractors that we trust to fix these sorts of things?
2) Do we have any way to actually vet or trust WP developers from within the community not to simply make power-grabs if they did it themselves?

It sounds like the problem is equal parts free site for the first and game theory for the second. I almost feel like someone could redo a lot of this and have us set for at least a few years with just a few weeks effort (myself I'm an .Net MVC and Angular dev, I think of how long that would take and how little time it would take with even easier setups).

If we consider WP members inherently too self-interested we might just want to do a donation/fund-raiser for renovations?

This is another thing too where it would be neat to consider maybe some kind of WP coin if we'd consider answers to questions like 'What's in it for me?' or 'How can I be sure that the money I give goes to fixing these things?'. Obviously this last thought is a bit wild and wooly but it would be a way to raise an equity pool for site maintenance.

1) No
and
2) No

Sorry, it's all down to Alex.

The site uses phpBB which, as the name implies, is built using PHP.
The issue with completely rewriting it in something else would be the delay/complexities involved, replicating the look-n-feel (as near as is practical), extensive testing, and ensuring the existing data set remains compatible - it's currently held over several MySQL tables.

I suspect that simply using the current release of phpBB and investigating/implementing some phpBB add-ons would resolve many problems and improve functionality, while still leaving additional custom PHP development or improvement opportunities possible - but it took ten years to arrive at the current (outdated) update, despite the many horrible bugs in the original version.

No offense. But it seems too late to update this site concerning its nearly nill traffic.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=403712&start=16#p8990083

You know what would be awesome? Dark mode. Every site should have it.

^ I seem to remember that someone created a 'dark mode' specifically for Wrongplanet many years ago. I tried it, and it was pretty good, but it had one or two shortcomings which tested my patience, can't remember what they were.

I now use 'Dark Mode Night Reader', which is available as an add-on for Firefox and Chrome, and probably one or two other browsers as well. This is absolutely excellent, can't find any significant faults with it.

Is that on a pc or phone?

I used to use dark mode on my laptop for wrong planet and it was fantastic but I've not got it for my phone.

Some sites have the option to switch to dark mode.

It's on a PC, I don't have a mobile phone. The Stone Age is still alive and well in these parts.