Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

JonoMarshall is correct.

The down arrow serves no purpose, as the thread title on an unread thread has exactly the same behaviour (take you to the first unread post), and on a read thread the down arrow isn't shown (not applicable).

It can be removed without affecting functionality at all.

Yes, Jon's obviously right in that--I just thought it was more logical for the thread title to link to the first post, although it is undoubtedly more practical in the majority of cases for it to link to 'newpostinthread' (which I think is up to a week old if you haven't looked at a thread for a while or have never looked at it, but there may be more nuances).

Another option would be to make 'newpostinthread' always link to the first post the viewer hasn't seen, i.e. if they've never looked at a thread, it would link to the first post. That would emphasise the first post (whose quality would obviously vary). People could click through towards the end of the thread fairly quickly. Or, if they hadn't looked at a thread for two weeks, it would pick it up two weeks before. However, I'm sure the 'one week before' rule was introduced for a reason, and I guess this may be one of those aspects of vBulletin that would take more major re-writing, even if you thought it made sense.