You seriously want them to spend what little development time they have on the admin panel?
WordPress has changed it’s panel for the last three versions.
Wait a version it will change again. And again. And again.
Then there will be plugins to change it back to the old version.
Then they will break all the admin plugins again after enough authors adjust.
Matt can’t make up his mind, first he likes top-down style and says people know how to scroll, then he changes his mind 100% and goes linear with an ugly, too narrow, center column. No attempt at supporting a fall back legacy design.
I kinda like how the bbPress 1.0 panel looks.
I can’t find anything quickly or easily under 2.7
I’ve started to think that when I get the time I might move towards the 2.7 lookl, but I’d also like to take the time to consider what bbPress needs rather than just doing a straight copy of the exact UI experience.
What gets done in the admin area of bbPress is mostly listing stuff, so it might be more appropriate to focus on really good search and filtering in the admin area rather than menu hierarchies.
Mockups are welcome if you want to contribute ideas. Just attach them to tickets in trac.
for what it’s worth, i love the 1.0 dashboard of bbpress. much better than the crappy wp2.7 thing
I think a plugin that puts the bbpress admin panel in the WordPress one would be nice.
Speaking of admin panels…
Personally, I didn’t like the WP2.5 admin, and I don’t like the current BB1.0 admin.
Furthermore, I don’t think the WP2.7 admin is going to be changed significantly in 2.8 or 2.9.
I think a big mistake was made with WP2.5, and this was realised by the WP devs and replaced by the excellent WP2.7 admin. They now have a good admin and I think they’ll stick with it.
I won’t be using bbPress on a live site anyway until it integrates better with WP and shows signs of being actively developed – looks like this will be soon, due to TalkPress – but additionally, the current admin is a big disincentive for me.
I see you have finally converted to the new admin style… congratulations!
It looks really good (except the green buttons in some places). Thanks. 
