Also, as a suggestion an interim (or maybe complete) fix for this could be to add a link under the "What's New" tab...

The current options are:
New Posts
New Group Messages
New Events
New Articles
New Blog Entries
Mark Forums Read

... if we add in a link that's "All new posts for past 24 Hrs" that would pretty much solve the issue. Then we could click "New posts" and see only whats absolutely "new" for each of us (in other words you don't see threads that you already read), but still have the ability to see "all" threads that have been updated in the past 24 hours, regardless of if you've read them or not.

That's pretty much what i've been doing with a few extra steps. When i click "whats new" and/or "new posts" and there's only 2 or 3 threads that I havent read, I have to click "mark forums read", then click "whats new" and then an error message comes up saying there are no new posts and "You may search for posts updated during the previous 24 hours, here".