Right now there's a "post new topic" button at the top left of every topic page, that when clicked creates a new post in the same subforum that the post currently being viewed is in. This is probably counter-intuitive to people who are unfamiliar with forum jargon (which is a growing portion of our target audience) - I imagine that they expect that button to be used to create a reply to the current post, not the subforum.

I've noticed a few cases recently of people either explicitly asking which of the two buttons they need to hit, or making posts in the wrong place that I attribute to the existence of this button.

I don't feel like too many people would be upset by its removal - it's only one more click to go to the subforum itself to make a post, and doing it that way makes it more clear where the text you put in is actually going to show up.

Totally agree - it's just not intuitive place for such a button to be.

I also agree

commandblockguy makes a good argument. Most of the time I start a reply in the "Quick Reply" text box and, if it becomes a large post, I hit the "Preview" button before continuing. Maybe both buttons could be removed, and the "Quick Reply" replaces both of them. It would simplify the site's appearance and make it more apparent where new users should go to post replies instead of accidentally creating new topics.

If a new user wanted to create a new topic in the proper category, they would more than likely sift through the forum categories first. Once they find the category they want, the "post new topic" button at the top of the page and the label "Topics" above the list of forum threads should be enough indication of what they need to do.

I agree with this as well. I almost never use the "reply to topic", and the location of the "post new topic" has always confused me as well.

I also agree this should be fixed

I support this proposal; I've never purposely clicked that button (but I have accidentally clicked it).

While we are at it, can we remove the "View previous topic :: View next topic" buttons that are also messed up displaying on Chrome? They make it look like Next/Previous pages but they aren't.

yea

Done.

And how about this monstrosity on the top and bottom of the page?

Yay but the monstrosity is still there.