[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Dark Visor

Umm... Why? Did you just make this up?

No. As said, this is official Jelsoft stance.
It is bad, as (in contrary to custom tables/colums/variables) using default vBulletin Bitfields for custom settings will cause Problems.

Wort Case scenario: Your Hack uses the next available Bit in forumoptions for "Show Quick Stats for this Forum".
Now the next vBulletin Version comes and redifines this Bit to "Prune this Forum every 24 hours".
Now all users of this Hack have the Bit set ...

Then they should make "custom fields" for forums just like there are some for users.

Well, what does adding a custom field do?
It adds a record to Table profilefield and alters table userfield to have a new MEDIUMTEXT columd fieldxx.
This is just an easy-to-use frontend to alter the Database, so where is the difference?

Keeping the Product Manager in mind, such DB alterations can be done easily, without the User having to know anything about running queries.