@lizz – the time thing being wonky is a “feature” (or “bug” as we like to call them) in Buddypress, so there’s not much I can do about it I’m afraid.
I agree – I think the Forums and Activity features aren’t entirely user-friendly; but I’m stuck with Buddypress as it was, frankly, the best of a bad lot which fitted my criteria for blog / forum integration. There is better forum software out there (older readers will recall the forums used to be completely separate from the blog and were accessed through a sub-domain and which used some different forum software) , but it just doesn’t mesh so well with the blog. I guess we just have to take the rough with the smooth.