dhn wrote:
The extra information it gains you is pretty much worthless as you never now how many topics have been replied to or how many new topics have been posted since your last visit (which would actually be a more useful feature).
this is a very old argument, and definitely water under the bridge by now, but i can't see how the last poster name on a forum is useful and last post title is worthless.
it is my guess that if showing both these details were made configurable (ie, the admin could select wheter or not to show last poster and last post title on the index, either per forum or globally for your board), most people would choose to show both, some would choose to show neither, and of those who would choose to show only one of the two, most would show the post title rather than the poster name.
(this is just a guess, of course).
imo, a more correct/sincere answer will be the classical psotfx response: "it is so because i (we) said so".
btw: same logic applies to last message in a thread in forum view: why show the last poster but not the last post title, if/when the last post has a title?
and, as to the "feature frozen" issue: something like this is not a "feature". at most it's a tweak, and tweaks of this magnitude are being presented into the code even now.