I understand the hesitation, but what if they didn’t the number of replies on a certain thread wasn’t shown? Would there be people saying leave it alone, or scanning for high activity posts is the easy way out, or don’t let other people influence which stories you think are the most important?
I think there is some here that want to keep things the same for the sake of being a die-hard freerepublic loyalist. Don’t get me wrong. I love this place, I just get the feeling freerepublic is sensitive to criticism. (Case in point if I’m banned for just posting this comment.)