Especially during post-a-thons, I so wish each thread was a chat room instead. Sometimes it's so frustrating to go back and forth and keep refreshing to see new responses. And sometimes annoying to open a thread and scroll all the way to the bottom just to see only one new response.
I think probably the best way to navigate for me would be to keep the boards page open and open threads in a new tab, read there, respond, then close that tab and refresh the main boards page tab. Sometimes I lose track of threads I want to read and respond to, so opening threads in new tabs would probably be the most efficient way to make sure I get to all the threads I want to get to (before they get lost down the page or into the second page).
How do you navigate the boards?