MediaHound

You can change your default subscription mode in your UserCP, under Options -
http://www.bananas.org/profile.php?do=editoptions
Scroll down to: "Default Thread Subscription Mode"
It is there you can select to either not subscribe when you reply, or to one of several ways to be subscribed. You can get emails instantly, or you can get a daily or weekly digest of 1 email listing all the threads of that day (or week) that got replies.

I added the birthdays to the homepage, when someone is having a birthday, it will appear there. It's a setting in your control panel as well if you wish to display your birthday or not.
Visit your edit profile page:
http://www.bananas.org/profile.php?do=editprofile
You will see in the section "Date of Birth" a setting for privacy. The default, for privacy of the members, is to hide it. So if anyone wants to display it, that's where you can find the setting to enable it.

Chironex, the linkback and refback thing just shows other sites that are linking to our discussion pages. It's not totally automatic though, all the links must be approved. I go through the log every few weeks or months and if anything seems interesting, I add them.
I find it strange that every thread you read you get subscribed to, I think its only threads you are replying to. Can you check to make certain that your being subscribed to threads that your merely reading? I have not heard about that before.

Kind regards everyone!