I think the spacing is nice. Although you could do more to balalnce it out. Add more complex stuff on the left region. And I think it needs a transparent border in front of the bg and behind the render and text. I don't like the font either.
Okay, go back to blue one, add that brush on it, set it to soft light and lower opacity to about 43% then dupe it. That would make blue one MUCH! better Imo, but they both look good, I like the glossy effect.
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.