The Home Page & Thread Questions

On the right hand side of the Home Page are three blocks of threads.  My Discussions, Active, and Unanswered. Can someone explain to me how these change? ie How long does a new thread stay in the Active section? How long is it before a new thread is moved to the unanswered section and when is a thread in My Discussions removed altogether? 

 

Why is the letters in the threads uneven in colour, for instance the letters vary from black to grey, which makes it more tiring to read?  The letter W is one letter that particularly stands out as being grey.

Threads that are coloured don’t seem to have this problem.

It’s pretty simple, as far as I can see. In each of the 3 categories, new posts or replies move to the top of the list. I suspect that editing an existing message counts as well as posting a new one, as sometimes threads seem to reappear at the top despite not having any obvious new messages in them.
I presume you’ve noticed that you can click on the title of each of the 3 panes, which opens a whole page of that category.

 The shaded text will depend on the particular combination of monitor and resolution you’re using.  I’m using an LCD panel in its native resolution at the moment and I’m not seeing any visible fringing on text.  I suspect if I changed resolution it would appear.

No, I hadn’t twigged that, so that’s something else I have learned about the forum today.(This is font size 12)
I have also just noticed that if the font size is 12 rather than 14 then all the letters appear to be the same shade as above.