The majority of these ideas seem quite nice, the Monthly Kudos ideas seems a little... strange... but other then that I like these ideas. The one about a Hiatus thread in particular appeals to me most, as I often have to take extended breaks from this site.

Originally Posted by Mad King (Post 376606) not sure how it's strange! it's to try to reduce people from selectively voting, or "seconding" someone already voted for -- because all that does is put high ranks in the spotlight. it's rare to not have a high rank be featured.

In my past experience, mind you I haven't checked it anything regarding monthly kudos very often since the site transfer, generally the characters picked were ones that had been rped a lot in the month prior.
Other things include a major plot happened that the character was apart of, something big happened in the character's life, or they faced some kind of trial in their life. (Skip to the bolded text if you don't want to read do a lot of perhaps unnecessary things that don't do to well of proving a point)

An example of this will be when one of mine and @Ivy 's Thunderclan cats were chosen for Ship of the Month. We had role-played with the two cats extensively for approximately 2 - 3 months, I used a freshly made character and I'm not 100% sure of the status of her's. The two started off as friends who eventually became mates who loved each other dearly. The female, Hollypelt (role-played by me), had just had given birth to 3 kits the day before and went out with her apprentice at the time, mate, cousin/her apprentice's love interest. They eventually got to a secluded area and the apprentice Violetpaw(eye) held the still-weak-from-birth Hollypelt down as her cousin, Alderstripe, brutally murdered her mate, Panthernose. This got a lot of attention around the site and a great deal of people voted for Hollypelt and Panthernose to be the SOTM.

I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that if you see that ONLY highranks are being chosen without good reason then maybe the runner-up would be a better choice, OR if you notice that it happens frequently then just put in the rules to not vote for high ranks for a while. I do however see where you are coming from, and it does indeed make sense and I see why you've done the change.