Rubinski has been slogging through all those old threads but there's a mountain of work there. Some of the members such as Immy, icu, and others have been helpful in bumping ones which should be marked as solved; keep up the good work.
I came close to discontinuing the Mystery Box because it's so much work to maintain. Now I've decided to keep it but it's low priority. I consider it a benefit but not a necessity. Not every request is MB worthy and this is part of the problem; every thread must be evaluated and either marked as solved, sent to the Mystery Box, or trashed. I'm trying to find ways to streamline this process and that's why I posted the notice about thread icons. Many of these threads can be flagged while they're current and this will save us the evaluation time at the back end. I currently spend 1-2 hours per day taking care of the daily routine and Rubi spends about the same on the back end. But this means we're just breaking even and it will require even more time to chip away at the backlog and take care of the Mystery Boxes. We're still maintaining the HOF counter thread so no info is lost but I can't say when it will be processed.
I would really like to have a dedicated Mod just to take care of the Mystery Boxes.
I'm glad to hear some of you like the more relaxed style. The structure was too rigid, I think especially when considering whether to mark a request solved when there is scant info available and the fact is many models just aren't listed in the major databases. No system is perfect and many of these are judgement calls but we'll do the best we can.