I'm finding it a hassle too. What about having the number-of-messages column to the left of the thread titles? It's easy enough for the eye to get in the habit of skipping across it because it's not very wide - a lot of email programmes have a short column of info to the left of the title & sender which you soon learn to "ignore" and focus on the info you want. The widest thing about that column is its title Messages, so what about shortening this to "Posts" or something?

I don't think it's an age-related thing (though I can't say for sure because I don't have experience of looking at it with young eyes): it IS a lot of lateral space to traverse, which is why many book title-of-contents pages have that row of dots leading to the numbers.

Good thread, Janie!