"View more replies"

regarding the new forum format — 2 things _really_ need to be fixed:

1) all the replies are hidden — you may see (part of) one reply, but that's all that displays. There could be scores of replies over the course of months (or years) but one would never know unless one clicked the "view more replies" text almost unnoticable at the bottom. The first reply — or the last — really doesn't encapsulate the whole of the discussion. And though I firmly believe reading the comments on online forums is one of the circles of hell, very, very often I find some piece of useful information in someone's comment — sometimes just a link to another discussion. 

Can you at least make viewing expanded comments a user-defined option?

2) It appears every reply, to the main post or replies to comments, contains the "view more replies" link — even when there aren't any.

Seriously? Why is that link even there? You've gone and removed all of the comments from view, hiding them behind "view more replies," and then you go an put "view more replies" on every reply, even when there aren't any more replies.

Why do you hate your users so much?! What is your goal? To dissuade people from engaging in disussions by keeping all of the comments from view? Torturing the users who want to read the discussions, or just experiment on them with the Skinner Box of "view more replies?" Maybe there's more discussion, maybe there isn't? Who knows? Just keep clicking to find out...