In other forums, we can often find a link to the latest posted messages (even already read). Would someone else find it useful here ?
It could give a simple list of, say, the 50 (or less) latest messages posted with the topic subject (which would of course link to the message), author and date of the message. This list being sorted by date descending, regardless of the forum it was posted in.
But you can have an idea by looking at the forum home page. Here you can see on the right the latest message for each board.
This would be almost the same approach, only that there would be no board name and it would contain all the latest posts, not only unread messages.
Today at 04:06:55 PM RE:website issues / Jeff_Birt
Today at 01:07:52 PM RE:The 500 USD coupon winner / Foekie (Robert)
July 21, 2010, 07:58:06 AM RE:Do you want to translate the free ebook? / Chimpanzee (Gus)
I have found that if I read through the list of unread messages and then want to go back and reply to one, because I later thought of something to say, then I have trouble finding that correct thread to reply to. A recent posts list would help. ;D