Sounds like you're all over it, in my opinion there are tonnes of reasons for keeping more thread info "upfront"... imagine scaling LFGSS to the power of 10 and how that would affect the ability to source/find the info/threads you're after, etc.
I may be wrong in thinking that people are more interested in seeing the replies to their own posts/threads than other "no participation" threads, but I doubt it. Highlighting participation threads also encourages further conversation and more "relevant" responses (people not continuing their conversations in other threads randomly, etc).
Sounds like you're all over it, in my opinion there are tonnes of reasons for keeping more thread info "upfront"... imagine scaling LFGSS to the power of 10 and how that would affect the ability to source/find the info/threads you're after, etc.
I may be wrong in thinking that people are more interested in seeing the replies to their own posts/threads than other "no participation" threads, but I doubt it. Highlighting participation threads also encourages further conversation and more "relevant" responses (people not continuing their conversations in other threads randomly, etc).