Let me answer your second question first: To my knowledge that "tree" view is not one available on the PHPBB format, and if it is, it's not something currently installed here at NSBB. If I'm wrong about that, I'm sure someone will correct me. The reason for the strict enforcement of the thread redundancy is simply that forum is much easier to moderate when all thoughts on a topic are in one place. It also has the additional benefit of providing much cleaner look to the forums. When popular topics arise (The Nomar trade, the Maddux signing, the Sammy trade), threads pop up very quickly, and therefore multiple thread topics can become quite confusing and overwhelming. We are trying to seperate threads that become too long to be manageable by locking the original and starting a new one for ease of viewing, but this is a large community, and sometimes those kinds of large threads are going to occur. Hopefully when Tim is able to find a way to balance the site's performance with a viable search ability, this won't be such a big issue.