The Answers forums (http://social.answers.microsoft.com/forums/) are on a slightly different implementation path. The answers forums are targeting the consumers (windows and office) and the owners of those forums have been investing in feature development targeting mostly those users. Some feature work there may eventually end up in the other brands (MSDN and TechNet Forums), but further evaluation of those features needs to happen, which is currently in progress.
Specific to Forums on Answers Brand
New Forums Home Page - Better layout, organization and faster page load
New Thread Data - Ability for forum owners to ask forum specific questions to thread starters
All Forums
Enable new locale: Australia
Fixes for Far East character sets in the private search results page
Bug fix for moved threads giving 404s
Community Forums Program Manager