I get the feeling of being cramped, like in a closet or something. Everything is hidden. I hope they can fix the entries so the name of the thread starter is shown.
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I could not agree more! And I stated this on the earlier thread. The good news is it appears the folks at OGR are already listening to the feedback and making attempts to adjust the layout as much as they have the means to do it. Some things are understandably beyond an administrator's ability to tweak and may require involvement of the Hoopla folks.
Change is ALWAYS a double-edge sword, and one always needs to evaluate trade-offs. Unfortunately, lots of changes that are occurring nowadays are too dramatic and done simply for the sake of change. The fact that someone commented that this new forum layout is patterned after Facebook may have hit the nail on the head.
Frankly, I could care less about Facebook (and the new crop of employee millionaires that will follow from its recently announced IPO). If I wanted to use Facebook, I'd go to Facebook -- not the OGR forum. I LIKED the old forum's design layout -- without the need to tell the whole world I liked it with a "like button". 
It worked for me (and my brain), and I had over 10 years of history with it. The ONLY benefit I as a user see in this new forum is the ease of uploading photos and videos (i.e., without requiring a separate site to host the image files). And I have a real difficult time believing that adding that function required such a dramatically different layout design. In fact, I KNOW that's not the case, as there are other forums in existence that provide that functionality with the "look and feel" of the former OGR forum.
Look... I understand we're all different, and we all have different likes and dislikes... and you can't please everyone. That's just not possible. If there's ANYTHING I've learned over the years on various forums... I can GUARANTEE that as soon as someone posts that they dislike something, absolutely with 100% certainty the very next post or two will be someone else indicating how much they LOVE that same thing. People are funny that way, and you just can't take any of this stuff too seriously.
I will say this however... there's definitely a new breed of folks out there with all kinds of different design ideas in their heads. Some of their designs will take root. Others will fall by the wayside. That's just the way change works.
Our local newspaper just launched a MAJOR design layout change a few months ago... and the overall consensus of readers is it's AWFUL. End of discussion. The design wonderkids completely eliminated the newspaper's masthead and leading headline(s) from each of the sections. So now readers don't even know which section is which -- nor do they even know what the lead stories are anymore. Heck, I couldn't even find the name of the newspaper the first day we received the new version!!! 
I mean... really... WHO in their right minds dreams up these unwieldy designs??? 
The only thing worse is the powers-at-be will never admit they screwed up and revert back to the newspaper's former design... at least not until a new breed of editors/publishers comes onto the scene.
Sorry for the rant here -- I've attempted to rant without hurting anyone's feelings in particular. I just wanted to remind folks here that our little corner of the world isn't immune to all the ridiculous change that's going in everyday life. We forumites just got our fill of it in the past day or two, and the medicine probably won't go down that easily for many of us "old-timers", which ironically represents a good percentage of this hobby. 
But we'll get through it. Some of us may choose to not visit here as often -- just like I don't read our local newspaper as much anymore (thankfully, it wasn't the only source of local info!!!), but we'll eventually get through it... although the glowing endorsements may be far and few between.
David
