I too vote for tech at the top.

As to the thread proliferation/consolidation issue...

First, I understand there will always be some consolidation. I've never had a problem with it in the past, until the most recent attempts at it.

As to verbosity, is the "new solution" to start editing people's posts? That seems like overkill in the extreme, would likely lead to a forum insurrection, and be an incredible waste of moderator time.

As to the issue of thread proliferation, it seems to me the main "problem" if you want to call it that, is one of popularity of the forum itself--growing pains, in other words. So how do you propose to control that?