[ [b][u]Idea[/u][/b] ]: separate section below where you type the body of your thread for a thread summary; maximum of 140 characters (hey, it worked for Twitter); appears as you hover over a thread title; is viewable in smaller, grayer font above all OPs once you enter a thread*; it is optional, and thus not required to fill out before you make a thread; one *enter* counts as 100 characters since you shouldn't need it and it would reduce the annoyance of any possible spam people could create with it.
*the text within the summary is subject to the same forum rules as any other bit of text you choose to imprint onto these electronic pages.
Sorry about the lazy writing. I'm about to make this thread and go to bed so I'm not much for cleverly articulating my genius ideas.
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Just based on some predefined indexes. ie. given some text, take the characters between indexes 0 and 140 and use them as the summary text. If you look at the [url=http://www.google.com/search?q=bungie]search results[/url] for a search on Google, you can see they do the same thing (note how the ellipsis is used to show the summary is only a portion of the full text as well).