i’m likely in the minority on this, but i am of the opinion the multiple avatars on those pages are cluttery, and thus i use the topic author theme component. i’m thinking of hacking it to make the most recent poster instead though (like the default when in small screen view). just the most recent poster (that isn’t me) would be better in the pm view too IMO.
similar to how there are different category view options, it would be nice to have some more topic list view options for (latest, new, etc). and to have some admin settings to control those pages’ avatar views, including which avatars to use (recent, most active, OP). even controlling column placement would be nice. sounds like a theme component. 