Yes, I've been a big fan of the 'threaded messages board'. I could never get use dot one that is not. I am aware of you concern to keep things simple, actually I was aware of the desire to do keep things this way as it is a somewhat inherent in me as well. heck all the admin scritps to me are command line ;-)

RPG board is an example of how not to implement featrues. their FAQ has an entry "theres so many knobes and buttons on the post page, what do they al do?!". (I would show you an example, but their site is down now. . . )

there re several ways to set up the features so as to keep thing ssimple, down below the message box I could add another button that says (EXTRA!) or (More Options!). That pretty much keeps everything out of the way. And of coures I would not require any of them to be messed with to post.

if theres one thing I don't like about its the way you sometimes have to click window after window and option after option to do simple tasks in windoww, I am mindful of this.

Name, subject, message, post will be all you ever need to do.
-Justin