Most of the "approvals" in the garage were originally setup because, well, no one paid attention to what was already there. We were finding three and four copies of the same vendors, manufacturers, tracks, etc. We had the approvals turned on from day 1, and I hate to say, but I feel it was a good move - otherwise, the place would have been a mess from what I can say I was cleaning up.
If we want to revisit the decision, we certainly can. But that's the reasoning.
Good bad or indifferent, the garage may go away. While I hope it does not, the garage is not supported by the latest version of vBulletin. We're on version 3, and version 5 is out. Our concern is that version 3 will not be supported much longer and if we have issues, we'll be stuck.
I've spoken with the developer of the garage and he said he has no plans to re-write it for version 5. So we may be looking for a new garage if and when we upgrade vBulletin (Which is the least of our worries - there's also no way to migrate all of the look and feel of the forums to the new version.) We won't lose any data, but it will almost be like we're starting from scratch in terms of the look and feel.
More info to follow when the time comes.
