Michelle, after reading through this thread and the other 3 threads that I know of that are talking about the changes, the unanimous verdict seems to be from experienced users of the boards that the US model is disfunctional, and that any wholesale changes to the boards we have here are not needed nor wanted.

A bit of fine tuning would help in certain areas, such as locking threads after 12 months of inactivity, would be welcome.

I would hope that the eBay team will take notice of the people that actually use the boards, rather than people that just look at them and decide to "fix" them - since "fix" in eBay terms usually means to "break" something that is already working reasonably well.