I DID notice (so not sure if it's new or not) that in places where you can see topics listed (like Recent Discussions and My Discussions) that mousing over the topic title displays part of the first post, to a limit. Awesome feature, gives a good impression of what the topic is about (something that titles cannot always do). Extending the limit would be nice for that. Also, if the right-side new posts could have that hover-over feature for
that specific post, not the original post (currently hover-over does nothing btw), then that would make replies to new posts that much quicker and easier, I think. But maybe no one would use it or notice it. Possible, since I just recently noticed it in the first place.
Also, I've thought that it would be nice to have more frequent updates to the Announcements (currently talks about v6.0 ending). Mentioning updates to the website, like the new private messaging (awesome btw) or other features, would make them stand out more, and make people notice them more (again, PM is well done, very slick, but right-side text seems small compared to all that around it). Also, how logged-in users do not link to their profiles (it's currently just plain text) just makes PM that bit harder to execute when someone comes online or hasn't posted recently. Yea, you can type the name in, but who wants to do that?
I guess this IS more about making topics clear, and saving time.
Um, maybe having a forum of simply topics links? It's debatable if we would even need to allow replies, since that would probably just be like "hey, here's this story that's interesting, read it" and you can probably comment on the story page right there, instead of on the site here. It could be that you just post a link, and the topic is not only locked, but does not show up on the right-side, so no one gets confused.
Now that I think about it, a shout-box type thing for the site would allow an easier format for link posts like that, and allow more casual conversation about it, with posts not counting for points. And if you are just posting a link for points... well... no comment. But I like the idea of a shout-box here. It would allow for group conversation without the need for big formal topics and such.