You might want to store other things in the hashtable, for an item type... hence using the key isn't a bad idea. Although you're free to change it to 0, if you please.
Yeah we will probably have another Beginner RP back in the Writer's Corner, and of course we hope to start more in the social group. So I welcome you to any of the options.
I don't think I'm dealing with quite the same pressures though, at the very least its a significantly smaller system. For the time being I'm just going to put together a quick scrubby box though and hope it works good enough to not make my house toxic
I do know this - xenforo dropped the ball by not keeping the vbulletin reputation comments as a feature. The loss of the Reputation comments data when we switched to Xenforo really was the death knell for the site when it came to all the users that left. I know I missed it so much and I got way less interested in the site when that feature was gone and I run the site.