I like this forum but...

penis

toilet paper

Well, actually you CAN check if someone replies to your post. Click Account->View Replies. However it doesn't include if you made a thread and someone posted in it and it wasn't a reply to one of your posts there. You could use the search function to quickly find a thread you're looking for if you remember it's title.
I can't say anything about the rest of those stuff though...

If you want more community, try the group chat or the new one cg made. Also join the people that play TF2. The forum's simplicity is great, but the community is far from just the forum.

Man these are some deep thoughts.

Join me as we build a bicycle out of dreams and ride it into friendship

As for your third point, there's a "View replies" function, under your Account button. Not the most intuitive thing, and it doesn't show replies to comments on giveaways either, but at least it's there.

The rest..... it's a shame CG hasn't done anything about it. I'd say post a support ticket with the recommendations, but right now Support is only handled by CG himself, and considering the staggering amount of old, unanswered tickets that are still active, i'd hold on to the thought.

It is what it is. And we make it work.

I really like the idea of categories. A category for problems, a category for complaining, a category for hating, a category for trading cards, and a category for forum giveaways. (I am joking on some of those.)

Since people already pointed out the view replies page, I'll just tell you why almost no one complains about some of the stuff you said. Even if we would like to have it implemented.

We're used to it. We're so used to it we pretty much don't care. That's one of the reasons there's so many useless threads lately.

But besides that, we find ways to go around some of that: There's a search function already for example, which isn't the best, but it can help. Sometimes we bookmark stuff. And we also know that (especially right now with CG doing all of the work by itself) it isn't the most important part of the site but it's also being worked on. Slowly but surely it'll get there eventually.

Don't misunderstand this tho, I'm not trying to say it offensively. Just answering your question from mine and others' point of view.

+1. We are waiting.

People (me included) have already asked for better forum features when this website was in its starting phase. All that we've gotten so far that is meaningful to it is the "View Replies" option, and that was only a couple months ago. In my opinion, Steamgifts could be just so much bigger if it had a meaningful and organized forum behind it (with forum categories and user stats). For now the forum is a merely a "Facebook wall" where things come and go all the time and people post thoughts with other random things as whole new topics and those topics get thrown in with all the other discussions relatively decreasing the quality of the forum in general.

I'm probably overthinking. But yes, this forum is a fucking mess. And it will probably stay like that.

Cuntflaps