I think the various colors of gray are very. The light is too light and almost not visible. What’s the point. Office 2013 “upgraded” so that it removed all background colors and went to three options of gray for background colors, and received numerous complaints. I do not think having “participant” and “reply” in such a light gray is helpful at all.
Also, what is the point of having different topics headers where you could put your thread if there is no way to access those topics apart from the main list of topics. The only way I found to get into questions on shidduchim, for example, was to go into a thread on that topic and then once the topic was on the screen somewhere, to click on that link. Too round about. If there is no direct access, who needs them?