Here's another wacky or impractical idea.
Perhaps users could turn some columns on or off in the list of forums, or list of threads within a forum. I never care about the date-of-last-post or who posted the first or last msg. If there were fewer columns, each row could be one line long instead of wrapping to two lines.
More difficult would be forcing the display to show two whole columns of thread titles on each page, if they fit. Or perhaps give the user a button to display "concise titles".
Often I make my browser text size larger, but only seem able to find "too small" and "too big". Thus I'm either squinting or very little fits on each screen.
Corey