I think the basic problem is that the ACS defaults to "oldest first", even though Philip's set up his own forums on photo.net to be "newest first". Worse, when you create the forum, you're not presented with this as one of the configurable options, you have to go to the administration page AFTER you've made the forum then change the presentation order.
Obviously, it's easy to forget to do so. It may be that Ben prefers oldest first (Ben?) but many prefer newest first, including me.
As far as user configurability, sure, why not? Add it as a "desired feature" using the SDM...thus far we're trying to maintain line-by-line compatibility with the ACS, and will undoubtably do so for bboard at least through ACS 4.0 because aD is rewriting the bboard module. If their rewrite picks up all the features folks want and that are deemed useful by the community, great - if not, post-4.0 would be a good time to look into adding them.
