John,

>But I can't afford not to get the advice and learning from the people here so the strong arming has twisted my outstretched arm and hand enough. I cannot afford to buoycott this site until another arises with the same excellent threads and user umm replies (ouch)

I know it's the principle of the thing that you're objecting to, as well as the loss of convenience of seeing a list of replies when you click the button -- but you CAN still access the replies from the upper-pane thread listing, right?

I also think that this is a bad decision, and was badly handled, but if the UT had never offered that functionality to BUTM's in the first place, no one would be complaining right now. It's the idea of taking away something that was already in use, that bothers me.

On balance, however, the BUTM's have just been given access to more features that once were PUTM only, so there it is.