I was thinking...
It would be great if there was a 'mark as read' option for threads. A small box you could tick, and then go to a button that tells the site to pretend that you read them, for threads that you know you don't want/need to read. I use the 'what's new' search almost exclusively, and if I haven't checked in for a couple of days, it's time consuming to catch up because I have to open each thread to clear it from the list. If I could handle threads like I do emails, and tick multiple boxes and then hit the 'mark as read' button, that would make the process a lot faster.