Originally Posted by
hemispheric
Why was this done? It's really an inconvenience, and I can't imagine any positive aspect of it.
Originally Posted by
IBsteph
This change was made intentionally yesterday when they did a VBSEO update.
That's the bit that alters the URLs to make them read in plain text (e.g. /Technical-Issues-386/ rather than forum=386). The search engines love that sort of thing as they can "read" just the URLs and assume that they know something about the content. That translates into more traffic to the site and, ultimately, more ad clicks.
In other words, it's all about the money. Just like always.