I've noticed within the past few days the absence of the posting of member's birthdays on the main forum page. When did this happen, and what was the reasoning behind it? Did I miss some sort of annoucement about this? It kind of looks empty in that spot now without it.

mine was april 6th. yay

It was so ridiculously big that probably nobody paid any attention to it. Probably saves quite a bit of bandwidth.

It was so ridiculously big that probably nobody paid any attention to it. Probably saves quite a bit of bandwidth.
The mods kind of voted on removing it.