To be honest I'm really kinda enjoying all this, it's livened the forum up a bit :-D

That said (and without wanting to sound intentionally rude to the developers), I'm pretty taken back at how bad the design is.  I'm sure the system itself it pretty neat, well thought out, what's "under the hood" etc.  But wow, the design aspect of it is pretty damn atrocious.  I'm a designer myself and wouldn't dare let a design like this loose on the public.  What I find even more strange is that even with this new design, the designer still hasn't grasped the fact that the "Top of Forum" button needs to be placed both at the top and bottom of each page, not just the top.

Simple design logistics alone should tell a designer that a thread page only can grow in length, therefore the "Top of Forum" button is always going to be needed most times closest to the last post made in a thread.  In other words, it needs to be at the bottom of each thread, not the top.  Bottom of thread placement should be standard issue, but also placed at the top for convenience.

The designer had it backward in the old design, and yet again in this one.