valhallen is right that it'd be difficult to exclude posts to a specific thread from user's post counts. It'd be even more difficult to apply such a change retroactively, and from a programming perspective, it just seems to be a bad idea. I think this is something which needs to be dealt with through policy rather than through changes to the site code.

Regarding conference rooms -- the keys don't change once they've been created. It's possible to bookmark a room and not have to key anything in to enter. I don't foresee any problems with moving this thread to a conference room. However, I think this merits a bit more discussion before any changes are made.

- h