Currently as far as I can tell, active topics lists all topics recently posted on from all forums(except AO addicts).

What if it were user customizable to only show those forums for which the user had a specific interest? For example myself, I read newbie, cosmos, general, tutorials and general security the most often. Perhaps it could appear somewhere in my user options that I only want recent posts from those forums to show up when I log in. That would also allow for the other suggestion for the AO addicts forum to be used, without confusing newbies about why they can't view the posts.

-K