Quotes

I understand the design is made up of rows, and some of the stuff like "follow this content" is probably a global row that gets added across all types of content. And then you have to have a "responsive" design thanks to Google's mandates, which makes it more complicated. So I understand it can never be "perfect".
Still, I think for the most commonly viewed parts of the forum, having three inches of white space below the forum title, something needs to be done about that.
The only reason I am pointing this out is because we are moving away from our heavily customized skin in order to make updates easier, and because the default IPB skin is now good enough that I feel it's okay to use. (We just replaced the header and footer with out own.)
Ideally, this is what it should look like:

@Takohashi I completely agree with you that there is indeed a lot of free space. The articles also contain a lot

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

This is really excessive.

It looks even worse if your forum background is set to white.