These styles of forums have been working very well here for a long time now.

I've seen people discribe them as old fashioned, but I've also seen nothing new in forums - many many forums out there have this style.

The forums I really don't like is where there are wads of indented responses to someone's post, which then make it harder to actually respond to the original post when it's a someone wanting help, or to keep track of what has already been posted after the original comment but much further down.

Those are the early types of forums and they're still being used today.

This one is much cleaner and once you take the time to find how things work, it's got a lot more you can personalise to your own tastes.

If you're really that good, you'll have seen the various links you can click on to take you to different points on the board - no need to hit the back button at all.