Which sounds important - if anyone posts this way.... and if they do, shouldn't it be a mandatory field when you register?

I don't see the point of only letting folks know what's important in terms of registration details only when someone posts a question about it.... ;-)

I thought the group box was set to pop up/insist if you haven't filled it on to be honest. Will have to check on that. We can't make it compulsory as not everyone who registers is a responder and has already been shown very few people read the guidelines etc anyway.

It could be if some extra 'groups' were added...
The extra groups can be things like 'Visitor', 'Trade', 'non-member', whatever... (it is late o'clock for thinking) then there will always be a value that can be used to search, it doesn't need to contain just 4x4 Response group names.

Well, it obviously isn't / wasn't compulsory or else you'd not be mentioning I'd not completed it :-) (I did yesterday by the way).

As Mario suggests, if you want to make it mandatory, it can be done quite easily, even if you just add "None" as the top choice.

You could also auto generate forum names from the entered real first and surname if you really want to impose some order...

Thers's that impose word again

In the top ten in the book of how to alienate your membership

Ah yes but the word "impose" was preceeded by "if you really want to".

Gordon, if, when you registered for the forum it had fields that said "Forename", "Surname" and "Response Group" and then it created a consitent, professional looking, free from misunderstanding forum name for you, would that really feel like an imposition?

I already provide almost all of the info you mention and some that you do not, however that was my choice.

Next you will want

All callsigns used by the member
Blood group
Veh Reg
Veh type
Location

I could go on but let's just leave things the way they are

Incidentally all groups are autonomous "ringfenced" by National and will probably stay that way for the foreseeable

That's absolutely correct. But this is a National forum...

Never said that it wasn't