Where is everybody? Where are the developers? Why is this forum so poorly organized?

I'm feeling a little dismayed because I have experienced development forums where:

• It was easy to discover if a particular concern has already been addressed, eliminating the need for redundant contributions.
• For each concern or idea, there was some sort of response from a developer. A tag for instance showing things like: Planned, Under Review, Started, Fixed.
• And there was an established method for users to interact in a way that allowed us to know if a contribution was just plain dumb or if others thought it valuable too.

It's a completely different genre, but please take a look at the feedback forum for 8tracks.com, http://8tracks.uservoice.com/forums/1858-general . I believe it's powered by http://www.uservoice.com/ . It seems to work very well. If I discover a flaw or have a suggestion, it promptly shows if others have posted something similar and I as a user can just upvote it rather than waste time repeating things. The developers don't have to be inundated with the same crap over and over. And on two counts there is recognition of contributions: We get a direct reflection of whether other users like a suggestions or have had a similar problem; And almost every contribution has been tagged by a developer showing its status and that it was at least looked at.

My problem here is that I don't feel like I have gotten any validation for suggestions or bug reports that I've submitted. I'm not looking for kudos. I just want to know if something is being addressed or not. It's a little tough feeling like I'm wasting my time here because I am deeply involved with Rhino. Upon discovery, Rhino4 quickly surfaced as my favorite design tool and I have been using it avidly for 9 years. I would like to think that, given my experience with and passion for using Rhino, my suggestions and reports would be considered at least somewhat useful. However, I get the impression that either Rhino5 developers are not all that interested in an open collaboration, the developers have an exclusively invited list of users that they interact with, maybe the developers are understaffed and overwhelmed, or I have been personally blacklisted because my ideas and contributions suck.

My dismay isn't just with the developers or this forum. There appears to be only a handful of users here. Compared to how useful Rhino is, there is so little activity. Pardon my sentimentality, but I deeply love Rhino as a design tool. And if I love it this much, there must be thousands of users who use, like, and depend on Rhino. Are most of them reporting to a different forum that I'm not aware of? Where are the developers getting all the feedback that would fuel a new release every couple of weeks? I just don't see that level of activity here.

All together, it appears that the format of this forum must not be very conducive to supporting a lively and useful collaboration between us users and the developers. Are there any other users who feel the same?