This is just my opinion...
When the forum started going through its major changes a few years back, one thing that they took out for the "mudnamers" was html privileges... I was sort of against it b/c a lot of guys who didn't want to pay for membership but who contributed with great pics and contributed much to the UG/ OG were now being limited in their way to contribute to discussion and to the community. Hell, IMO the OG's forum posting hottie days aren't as great now as they were back in the day. But I could understand why they took away the HTML privileges... make some better options for pro-membership and also to stop the abuse that was done with some pretty disturbing pics (i.e. the gay porn spam and hack attacks). To this day, I don't like it but accept it.
However, I think the search option should at least be given back to the mudnamers. Part of the forum appeal is that threads have some sort of discussion be it criticisms or praise. The search function helps people find their favorite threads that they have difficulty finding and helps promote discussion/ views. I know you all want to make pro-membership worthwhile, but doing so doesn't have to mean taking away a useful tool for finding threads that can help promote more discussion...
my appeal for the MMA lords to be gracious toward mudnamers...