Also,

being blunt: I have no absolutely no interest in 'shrewdness factor', cute icons, finding 'new boards'.

I just want to see all new posts being made and pick out interesting sounding ones.

I don't care what board the person chose to post it on.

This is the same kind of mistake TMF made with having 'avatars' and 'awards' and 'categories' on their new site.

I want to be able to do the things I actually want to do.

What I want to do is find *all* new interesting posts, regardless of where they are made, and quickly read the most interesting sounding ones, in a dense formatted list.

The overall board structure is totally irrelevant to me.

Icons, 'social rewards' etc are totally irrelevant to me.

The value of a discussion site does not come from the board hierarchy or the icons and ratings, it comes from finding and writing interesting posts as easily as possible.

I suspect others might feel the same way.

Is there any harm in testing out such a feature ('new posts list') to see if it's valuable?

It's hardly more than a "SELECT ..." statement away.

It's also a long-proven way of arranging discussions on the internet.

Classically, USENET boards were simply a (*very* broad theme) plus a never-ending list of recent posts - and nothing else!

lux