it is now 1984. bureaucrats control all. this control is achieved via permission configuration.
each user can be assigned a role in a forum. if a user does not have an assigned role in a forum, their role is inherited from the parent forum. each role has permissions, togglable by bureaucrats, restricting or enabling users with the role to post things, configure threads, etc.
there is now a UI for creating subforæ, and subforum creation is a grantable permission.
a "subforum request" subforum shall be created for subforum requests.