I think I might know what you're talking about; I've ran into forums before that have had this. There would be a box, basically, which would show about five to fifteen new threads posted by members on index. I personally don't think it's so bad, but only thing that I dislike is that if it's displayed on main home-page like most other forums, to some people, it might wind up being a little redundant (for example, if you're a role-player, you wouldn't find it much helpful to see things from game dev section). What would be better is, in my opinion, if they were placed board-by-board, and when you visit a specific section, you'd see a list of recent topics from that place only.