This could well be spoken of before, however I will ask it again. Mind you that I am dumb in most and many things but being dumb in computers is where I excel. 

In most forums that I visit, if the arrow is pointed to a subject in the topic list, a short box appears for a few seconds giving more information than the simple subject provides.
If allowed by present software, I think such would be a nice help in determining whether one desires to review that topic or pass on it, especially considering the time frame that one may be under at the time of observation.

Thanks, "Doc" for the information. Does your response mean that you would/could check more topics and/or possibly have the time to respond to more discussions if you could get a quick glance at the basic information of the thread starter? 

I'm thinkin' that the little pop-up balloon thingy would be an integral part of the forum software, and either it does it or it doesn't. I wouldn't get my hopes up, but there's also a chance that it's one of those little things that you just need to put the "cusser" to it and hit the button, when you're setting up the defaults.    Steve