I’m on a large monitor and the avatars are still too tiny for my eyes. I have to lean over and peer at the screen from way too close in order to see what they are.
I wish they’d close up all the white space between posts. Makes it hard to go back and reread an older post.
Your avatar is very pretty, EmilyG and such lovely colors! Is it from a painting?
Currently for Beckster I see a beer bottle cap. Is that your “new” one?
Thank you!
It’s a building in Montreal, Palais des congres it’s called. It’s from a photo of mine. I’ve been told the colours show up better on the new board. And yes, it really is that colourful in real life!
puuurrrrrdy
[Gollum]We hates the white space, Precious[/Gollum]
When we first got avatars I wanted them to be as small as possible but I got used to them and now I wish these avatars were as big as the old board (but no bigger).
Nice to see some things never change.
Click on them.
Yes my new avatar. If that didn’t work I was going for your street sign you sent me.
Thanks!
ETA: Still don’t know what dogbutler’s is. But maybe that’s the idea.
Ol’ Granny Hawkins is hangin’ in.
Everyone is carping on the white space, yet no one is commenting on the 25% of the screen that is wasted on a time line on the right?
My first thought on the new boards is that it was designed by committee, and said committee had never seen a message board… 
I think my main gripe is that the thread list doesn’t show who the OP is. Very inconvenient, as there are some folks I just don’t read. But beyond that, I don’t hate the new format. If it had been this way from the start, we’d all be used to it by now, right?
In the grand scheme of things, it’s no biggie.
People have mentioned it. I too dislike it. You could fit more content in that wasted space so you wouldn’t have to scroll as much.
With regard to the white space, I’ve found Discourse Classic theme sets the background to grey, including the formerly white space between posts, so it’s easy again to tell where posts end and begin. I still don’t like the fact that the white is so white, and am hoping for a slightly but not very much darker theme to come along.
The “Straight Dope Light” and “Straight Dope Dark” themes (I’m now using the latter) do away with the wasted space on the left.
It does show that, but you have to work a little. 
There’s a row of avatar icons after the thread title – the first one is the OP and the last is the most recent poster. Hover on them to see who they are.
Hover on the “Activity” item (the last column) and it will show you the date and time of the first and last posts.
Thank you! I obviously haven’t played enough with the various options and hovers.
Right now, I’m thrilled with the new board, if only because the new configuration allows me to get around my employer’s firewall so I can post again from work. Yay!
Just click on the avatar and it gets bigger. Or is that view not big enough? Dennis
Not for me they don’t. Still large amounts of wasted space on both left and right.
Mac desktop, Firefox.