I think the idea of a formal bug tracker is excellent. Posting bug reports to the forum is hit or miss at best. And the poster never really knows whether any notice has been taken unless someone replies directly to the initial report. Which often doesn't happen in threads such as "VL-5.9-STD Bugs/annoyances". It is also difficult for a user to know where to post bug reports to the forum.
The trouble with a formal bug reporting structure is that it has to be properly used by all sides. People reporting bugs need to be prepared to search to make sure that the bug they are trying to report has not already been reported. They also need to do their best to cover things like hardware, environment, steps to reproduce, severity, etc. On the other side of the coin, there is a need for someone to check the reports frequently and assign reported bugs to those best able to chase them. Which places quite a load on the developers. But there are few things more frustrating than taking the time to report a bug (in detail) only to find months later that it is still classified as 'new' and has not been assigned to anyone for attention (I'm speaking from personal experience there...).
As an interim step, maybe having a forum area devoted to bug reporting with only one bug per thread would be a good way to start - it should be fairly easy for people reporting bugs to search the topics, and it should be reasonably easy for developers to go through the area looking for things that need attention.
paul.