Thanks for your post and I'm sorry about the aggravation. It's always a challenge to balance the pluses and minuses as they impact members differently. In 2011, I initially set up the destination forum as you prefer. But I had an outcry from members who didn't perceive the continents as being given equal footing. Look at the
Destination page to see what I mean. Each continent is in blue and is a non active link. Each active forum is in white below. There are four sections of the world where there is only one subforum. If I took away the blue heading (the non active link), it is not quickly visually obvious as to where the continents are.
Words are failing me to attempt to give a good word picture but I hope I've stumbled far enough along that you take my meaning.