When using the new Yahoo! Message Boards you'll notice the messages are grouped into topics. A topic consists of an initial post plus all its replies.

The Topics page contains a list of the first messages posted to each topic in the board. The topics can be sorted by "Rating" or "Latest Post." The default is Latest Post, which means the first topic in the list contains the most recently posted message. The most recent message might be the first message in the topic or a reply to the topic. This makes it easy to see which discussions are active at any time.

The timestamp in the Latest Post column links to the most recent message in the topic. So if you just want to read the most recent message, click the timestamp.

Clicking the "Next Topic" link at the bottom of the Topics page takes you to the topic with the next most recent message, and so on.

When you enter the topic, there are various ways to view the messages. The default view is threaded, which means you see the first post at the top of the page and the most recent messages lower down. This view is convenient if you want to understand the discussion quickly. If you are more interested in seeing only the most recent messages in the topic, change your view to Msg List, which displays all the messages in the topic in reverse chronological order.

There are two ways to change your view to Msg List:

1. To change it only for your current session, click the "Msg List" link on the left side of the page. If you visit another board, your default returns to your selection in Message Boards settings.
2. To make your view preference appear every time you access message boards, change your Message Boards settings. Click the "Message Boards Settings" link on the upper-right side of the page. Click the "View Settings" link on the left. Then select your preferred view, and click "Save" to return to the message boards.