I’d like to suggest that the administrators either reduce the length limit on usernames, or institute a guideline that your username should not extend the width of the “Last Post” column. In other words, it should fit underneath the date with "by " in front of it.
The “Thread Starter” column is explicitly 30% of the table width, which also leads to waste space, but I know how you feel about tweaking the VB templates if this isn’t controlled by a config setting.
A length limit of 18 might be good. With a normal distribution of character widths in the name, this probably doesn’t extend past the “Last Post” date display, or not by much (Some clown can still name themselves “WWWWWWWWWWWWhy ME?” or something like this, but it would at least reduce the frequency).
One time when somebody (not me) carped about long usernames in the pit, it resulted in a snide suggestion to take your monitor out of “granny mode”. Just for your information, I’m currently reading this in a fairly high resolution (1280x1024) on a 21 inch screen with default font size, allowing the browser a good chunk of the screen real estate, and the waste space still irritates me. Seeing 23 subjects without scrolling doesn’t mean I would not prefer to see 25. The theoretical one-line-per-subject maximum of about 30 the way I’m currently displaying my browser is never to be attained, I realize.
Yours for fewer line wraps in the Subject column.