Josh wrote: What would you recommend for the Meta description in pagination? The first reply on page 2 isn't necessarily going to be the main theme for the entire page 2. 
As you already know, the main reason for implementing this, is to avoid SEO penalty from search engines, the first reply on page 2 will be ok for this task.
However, there are other options like using the same description from first page + page numeration inside description, this also fix duplicate issue.
In my personal case the first reply on page 2 is not a problem, because my website is configured to show only 1 post per page. If you think about it, lower numbers means more pages being indexed, which means more traffic from search engines. (Of course, I am aware this hurt user experience navigating the website)
Other option is to mix reply 2 and reply 3 when reply 2 Meta description is too short.
I know there are others good options, but I don't have it in my mind right now.
Josh wrote: The problem I see is that the user's name is mentioned twice as well as the name of the forum. Search engines now days don't give any extra brownie points for repeats.
Is better than nothing.
It works? Yes
Could be improved even more? Yes, I agree
Chiripas, do you know how to improve it even more? Not right now, maybe tomorrow after taking a rest.
Josh wrote: I cannot come up with a more clever title considering that it should be unique.
It could be a little difficult, because there is no content in profile pages and most of them has the personal text field empty