If you have a large monitor, it's hard to understand that there are limitations on space for some Mudcatters. If you reduce the width of a Mudcat window dramatically, you can see that compressing Mudcat beyond a certain width, can make a screen that very hard to decipher. There's a lot of white space on my 30-inch monitor, but very few Mudcatters have monitors that large. It's very difficult for me to read Mudcat as it is on my dad's WEBTV when I'm visiting him. Longer thread titles would make it impossible.
Unless something is removed from each line of the menu display.

Is there anything that doesn't need to be on the display? I never use the "trace" function, so I wouldn't mind dispensing with that, but would other people miss that feature?

There are some links on the page for editing purposes. They don't show up on normal user pages, but they are necessary. The moderators have about five extra spaces to play with on most thread titles - this often allows us to add clarifications without removing much of the original thread title. This is expecially helpful on some of the thread title standardization we do, like adding death dates to obituaries and alternate spellings and songwriter names to song titles and dates to festivals. Some may object to this giving of extra space to moderators, but it has proved to be very helpful. It allows us to preserve the original thread title intact, and just add to it (we sometimes steal a little more space by shortening the introductory title tag). It also allows us space to add something to make a thread title distinguishable form all the other thread that have the exact same title - even if all we do is number the similar threads.

I think it's a good idea to allow the moderators space for title clarification and standardization. It helps everyone find things a little more easily.

And if we make substantial changes to a thread title, we do notify the thread originator, to make sure that person can find the thread. If it's just adding clarification to the title, we don't bother contacting the thread originator.

Max is aware that some people would like longer thread titles. If he thinks it's worthwhile, maybe he'll lengthen the thread title field. Or maybe he won't see it as worthwhile. Maybe it's a good idea that there are some limits on the wordiness of some of us, hey?

-Joe-