What if while on the forum we could Like ideas? And only admins can see the conglomerate of everyone's Likes so that they can poke their head in from time to time and get a consensus on what ideas the forumites like, possibly as inspiration? I wouldn't limit this feature just to original topics, but also the discussion within.
We know it will be very difficult for any game to please everyone. So the conversations with debates on controversial ideas could use something to help objectify (although not perfectly) where the community in parts and as a whole stands on issues that the admins may want to see our opinions on. And if there's anything they explicitly want to know, they can probably just open up a poll; I don't expect that to happen for anything of significance though.