Regarding UBB.threads and why it was designed the way that it is designed --
This is an example of why its not pushed to the user as a default display mode for the topics page:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/posts/175970/When there are hundreds of replies to a single topic, all of the other topics are flooded out of view. This would make for a very unpleasant user experience on active forums. It may be fine for very low traffic forums, but it doesnt work out well for active ones.
In that example post I linked you to, there are over 3,000 replies. Imagine being a user and having to deal with that every time you logged in to read the forum. Now imagine trying to scroll through that to find the discussions you really wanted to read. That brings large CPU and MEMORY requirements to display it, not to mention the required bandwidth from the end user every time they switched from on topic to the next, having no care about that single topic with 3,000+ replies.
