I don’t see any reason why general threads that can no longer be posted on should stay on the default page, or within the same list as active ones. If 21 days pass without a comment and the thread gets closed, it should drop to a lower list.

This would give all the room in the world for all current threads to be presented on the default page.

The default page doesn’t have to fit on one screen-sized page. It could be several page-lengths long. It is easy to scroll down, much easier than choosing other options in order to view posts not on the front page.

The default setting should not be 5 threads per category, it should be set to include all active threads and exclude closed ones.

It would be a good thing for authors to be able to distinguish certain words by emphasing them - ie via the bold, italics and underline functions that word processors use.

Then if you want to emphasise a word or sentence, you can do so appropriately by, for example, using italics or bold rather than capitals.

I strongly agree Rob. In fact I find it very strange that these fascilities would be completely removed so that we only have upper and lower case of one font type and size to work with!

‘fascilities’. Ahh furballs!! |:<(

Nah Ludwig, you don't get out of it that easily. That was a freudian slip, mate. Only respect for Godwin's Law prevents me from elaborating. But you know what I mean. And don't offer any aryan fairy explanations in attempt to minimize this gross breach of your cover!

While I'm here, I'll just mention the desirability of a 'hard' post number being displayed on each post in a thread. V-Bulletin software, and probably other as well, provides this facility, so I assume it's not that difficult to do, from a software point of view.

It can make internal referencing unequivocal, on those occasions where such referencing is helpful. Like what would be good right here in this here intra-thread flame! 'Hard' numbering also provides a witness to post removal.

Forrest Gumpp: "I'll just mention the desirability of a 'hard' post number"

Yes, I agree. I saw it in action the other day and liked it a lot.

Just so others understand, what Forrest is referring prominently numbering each comment posted to an article, so the first comment posted for an article is numbered 1, the second 2, and so on. As soon as you do that people start using them, saying something along the lines of "in comment #4 xyz said". And as Forrest says, gaps in the numbers make deleted posts obvious.

Comments are numbered now, but you can't see the numbers easily and its a global number to this will be comment 42600 or so, not comment 90 (this being the 90'th post to this thread).