Certainly there is not the same motivation for removing the word "posts" from the scrubber. But the comparison was just to demonstrate how fluent can seem better than telegraphic.
But I can see why the repetition bugs you. The problem I'm having with the solution is, by the time I'm looking at the
I've pretty much forgotten how the discussions are sorted (assuming I've even bothered to think about that). So without the "last reply" that information gets tied directly to the title ... which makes it seem like info about the OP, not about the latest activity. So we end up with another username/avatar mismatch, no matter how much space is between.
I think you could get away with removing the verb, if you could make the four options in the drop-down menu a little more clear. That is, the word "reply" doesn't appear in the drop-down menu, so if you remove it from the posts, it won't be anywhere. Perhaps you could change:
... to something like this:
- Latest reply
- Most replies
- Newest
- Oldest
That adds the information you're removing from the individual topics (but it also adds volume to the menu).
EDIT: Nothing's ever easy. I guess minimalism comes with its own set of challenges.
