These seem to cause problems for some people. The issue seems to be if someone sends someone a link, via ICQ/email/AIM whatever, they will get "The topic requested does not exist" error. But if you change the semi-colons to ampersands and everything works fine.

1. any reason why the switch to these was made?
2. anyone else having these problems too?

nobody else has gotten ppl telling them of this problem?

Where are you seeing this? From here?

xhtml compliance iirc.