As someone who runs a forum exactly like this, I disagree with this assumption.
I used the default for months. At first I got complaints about the topic view, which I expected due to it being a change. No one said they liked it, everyone seemed to tolerate it.
When I switched to the minimal layout, I heard no complaints, but plenty of compliments and thanks. This is anecdotal of course.
I understand your reasoning, and to a certain level it makes sense, but without prompting and some teaching, users seem to look at it as extra noise. It really seems like a power user feature that not everyone enjoys. Even for myself, it became extra noise because I didn’t need to see that many people in a thread. If I knew who created the thread that gave me context if I cared about the thread. Seeing the amount of replies and potentially the last person gave me the rest of the context.
Thinking about it, the flaw with the user column is because it is hard to see what it means without explanation. It is technically information dense, with no real explanation. So while the information is valuable, it isn’t something that is easy to grep at a glance. Just because you @codinghorror think it makes sense, you really need to look at it as an outsider or someone new to really understand why it is confusing.