[answered] Did threads just shorten?

Not your imagination. This was done because the pages were taking too long to load. Gonna mark this one answered.

I thought it was for advertising money. It's a good way to accumulate more hits, not that there's anything wrong with that. I understand the financial aspects of this institution.

By the way, McG, the vast majority of advertisers pay for ad clickthroughs, not hits.

Another thing is that I believe (not sure on this) the majority of traffic on a2k comes though search engine users, not members (who'd be more likely to read through multiple pages).