Just wanted to point a few things out that I've seen after a few days of this. I was skeptical at first, but now I'm convinced that Hashtags and the new Reply belong in the final iteration of .next in some way. [u]Hastags[/u] [quote]You can organize the Topics under each Tag using filters that will sort them according to when they were posted or how the community is responding to them. Space and time are firmly within your grasp![/quote] The thing I would like to emphasize is time. Over the last few days, I've noticed threads that never got replies when they were on the front page be revived hours or days later. With no reply chain, and no followers for most of the OPs, the only way someone could have found that page would be searching directly for it, or through hastags. As an example I present [url=http://www.bungie.net/en-US/View/community/Forum/Post?id=5291303]this[/url] thread, one I made about a Marathon topic. Notice the structure of the replies; the majority of them are separated by hours. As I've said before, this is consistent with the speed of the Universe forum, if not a little faster. Most of my initial skepticism centered around less popular topics never having a chance in the one-forum structure. This makes it clear to me that such topics still have a shot, and potentially even a better shot than they did before. [u]Reply Format[/u] Though it's reasonable to argue that this makes threads hard to follow, I'd like to point out another time-related benefit. On the old site, when a thread got 50+ replies, how often did you not feel like posting in it? Chances are good that by page 6 the topic had evolved significantly beyond the OP, so your two options were to respond to the OP and re-tread old ground, or to read 6 pages of a thread that might not even be worth it. And no matter what, that thread would still be sprinkled with people responding to just the OP. We need to realize that chronological order doesn't necessarily denote logical order in forums, and it certainly didn't on the old site. In addition, the ability to form the little reply chains allows the topic to branch out and evolve while still being accessible to those new to the thread. I've seen huge threads where more than 50% of the posts were locked up in replies, and people actually discussing the OP were able to carry out conversations over hours [i]in the same thread[/i] that people were having minute to minute conversations. It's kind of ingenious really. Also, it allows people to carry on separate conversations from the OP without derailing it, which is again, awesome. The OP gets bumped, and the de-railers get their conversation. Everybody wins. All in all, the biggest change is the forum divisions, but I'm starting to realize that the hashtag system can replace them. Initially I wondered why they would do that when it would no doubt be less efficient, but if the hashtag system can also break down the barrier between the first and second or more pages, then it totally has a place here in my opinion. I suspect that eventually we'll just see the old forum divisions as training wheels or bumper lanes. It's kind of nerve-wracking to go without them, but we'll get used to it.