This is just a request for an extension to Vanilla - it's a beautiful forum that works beautifully.
However, if there are a lot of new discussions and a user is away for several days, there should be a mechanism whereby the person who is putting up the discussion can draw the attention of specific members to it - this should not be "whispering", per se, as others should be able to see the same discussion and participate.
I suggest there is an added field for "Pinging" users - putting in the names of users, separated by commas, for whom the discussion would be relevant. There should be an added filter which changes colour when there are "highlighted discussions" which would be relevant for the user. Clicking the link would filter the discussion list to those which the user has been "pinged" to.
I hope that I am making myself clear - thank you for your attention.
Sort of - the users I'm encountering really want to be able to put together lists of members who are interested in particular discussions, and then draw the attention of those lists to those discussions. At the moment, the only filtering I've got is the keywords extension, but that's not quite the same thing.