I honestly don't know why most people out there prefer table layout. Maybe because the messages themselves on most forums are bland, so they need to add some filler to make it look pretty.
The new forum has a lot of visual clutter. Maybe a package parameter to use old style posting displays is not such a bad idea, after all. Look at this forum: there is just the bare minimum that needs be displayed. It's clean (credit goes to Philip Greenspun). Also, if the posting title differs from the thread title only by Response by clause, there is no need to display it at all. It's just another redundant clutter.
When I saw the forum in 4.x distribution, my forst thought was "sigh, this is the first thing to hack".
A harder problem is that there seems to be no way to view new answers like in this forum, or sort the threads by latest answers. I can hardly believe this functionality is gone. Why should the package become worse?